NationStates Jolt Archive

"Quietly..." a dwarf was whispering to another. From the look of them, they seemed hardly fit to the enterprise they were undertaking, but undertaking it they were. Around three thousand dwarves, armed to the beard with rifles, grenades, and general nastiness, were marching in a long file, the natural quietness that dwarves have (still noisy to hobbits, but positively devoid of sound to human ears) aiding them in their quest. Their current location was at the base of one of the numerous Liangite mountains. These were the fyrd, the militia that made up the bulk of the Gabiluzbad's finest, trained enough to defend villages against raiders and little else, except en masse, where the sheer volume of firepower was effective against most anything. And now they were homing in, deathly silent, on the abject terror that had haunted the dwarven comunities underground here for weeks on end.

A human man stood watch in the dark, focusing his orbs on the inky blackness of a huge, abandoned hallway. All of the men here dreaded watch duty, the dwarves were constantly probing the outskirts of the camp, and this time was no exception. Wishing he could drift off to sleep, the man leaned on his rifle, and was granted his wish swiftly when a dwarven axe embedded itself in his sleepy cranium.

A dwarf approached a grim-looking leader by the name of Dorin. "Watch five is down. We have an avenue of attack." The leader nodded and the dwarven detachment continued on.

Hundreds of men cleaned and polished deadly, well-made katanas, sitting around elaborate tents while men stood rubbing their eyes in hastily built earthworks around the camp. Stalagmites jutted up from the ground here and there, occasionally skewering the odds and ends of bored ronin. In the center a gold-inlaid tent housed Ashikaga Yoritomo, the Terror of the Khazad, current leader of a band of some thousand or so ronin isolated deep in halls walked continously by the Barukzigil. Dwarven loot was incredibly good, but if the Barukzigil ever caught up with them....well, he tried not to think about that. Yoritomo was all-too-anxious to get out, for lately his normally (relatively) large band was depleted, his brother having gone off to Mars to fight the corporate battles of Kajali Mars, taking a good chunk of the Ashikaga clan with him. Not to mention the vengeful raids of dwarven militias intent on avenging such trivial things as...the young leader smiled. Such trivial things as burning settlements, looting them mercilessly, and putting the inhabitants to the sword. He yawned.

Dorin gave the signal and the militia broke into a run. As they neared the ronin's picket lines, an earth-shattering warcry broke the deathly silence of the Terra's subterranean embrace. "Khazad ai-menu!" Dorin himself plunged into the fray, lead flying and grenades exploding, shrapnel everywhere. All sense of time was lot as his battlelust was up, terrible red eyes marking him as distant, distant Nardukher kin.

"Khazad ai-menu!" The cry broke Yoritomo's reverie. Hastily he threw on body armor that visually resembled lamellar, sheathed his sword and grabbed a gun and an assortment of nasties and flung himself into the role of mercenary leader. "Shit shit shit shit shit," he cursed, watching as the surprised ronin threw on gear. Static and fevered cries mixed with calls of surprised despair from the radio that kept him in contact with all parts of the camp. Hurriedly he sent out orders, abandon the first three lines, to the fourth they would rally. Fight tooth and nail and prevent an all-out rout. Calling men from all sectors not beleaguered, Yoritomo flew towards the scene of battle, trailed by ronin on all sides. What he saw chilled him. Isolated men fired in the dark, and bullets came whizzing past. A piece of shrapnel embedded itself in his armor. A dwarf, apparently lost in berzerker rage, came flying through and found his head had stayed behind. Sheathing his sword in favor of the assault rifle, lead spewed on all sides as the ronin regrouped and rallied around machine guns that fought off the ill-favored fyrd. Now their discipline showed itself the match of dwarven ferocity, and the brief element of surprise the militia had achieved was lost as the ronin slaughtered them by the dozens.

Still they came on, and a single leader, the only one clad in mithril and wielding excellent weaponry, led the crumbling dwarven attack in one last hurrah. Yoritomo kept running as the dwarven attack fell apart.

Dorin hacked and shot, grenades dispersing onrushing Liangjin as his mithril attire turned aside bullets. The day was fast becoming lost as his militia fell apart. With a sigh he resigned himself, his vengeance for the loss of relatives unquenched. Still he fought at the head of dwindling numbers of dwarves, screaming curses and warcries, till he saw the splendidly clad leader approach him. The Liangjin stopped firing, and Dorin was aware that fifteen dwarves were all that remained. His battle-scarred, bloodied armor still shining in the gloom of the earth, he yelled horrible curses in Khuzdul at what he knew must be Ashikaga Yoritomo. The man spoke in Low Liangite, but Dorin was not listening, had never been listening. He threw down his rifle and grenades in favor of an axe, screamed his challenge of a duel, and rushed forward, ignoring the answer.

Yoritomo bent his face into something resembling a smirk, unsheathed a perfectly balanced katana, the tsuba recounting ancient battles long-past between Ashikaga ancestors and various enemies. The dwarven axe came down, but Yoritomo was not there. Again Dorin swung, but the ronin had evaded his wrath. A second later a tanto had sunk into the dwarf's neck, and the battle was over. The remaining dwarves were cut down by fire an instant later. The Ashikaga had escaped disaster once more.

An office adorned by plaques of recognition, most everything in it plated with every kind of precious metal, was the seat of the Captain of the Barukzigil, Nilôzôr, the Moon Flame, the White Death, whose physical prowess was equal to all save perhaps Azaghal himself. His quick, alert eyes scanned a memo relating the defeat of a militia detachment sent to defeat the Ashikaga ronin band on the outskirts of Suntop, tenth level. Sighing quietly, the dwarf hummed thoughtfully and stroked his snow-white beard. Human ronin bands usually kept to the hillsides or mountaintops, rarely venturing into dwarven domains, preferring Yorinaga’s retribution to Azaghâl’s. But, occasionally, they would get to feeling lucky and venture beneath the earth, destroying a few frontier villages before the Barukzigil caught up and destroyed them. Ashikaga Yoritomo’s band was particularly well-known. He had made a living evading Yorinaga’s assaults as a mountain bandit, and recently had refocused his attacks on Barâk-dûm, defeating fyrd detachments and occasionally tussling with a xenomorph hive or drow marauders or the utah packs or even remnants of the mindflayers. Lately they had become more and more violent, and the pleas of the outlying villages outweighed the complaints of drow, raptor or mindflayer activity. And now over four hundred dwarves were dead. Kingdoms had been slaughtered for lesser grievances.

It is time they were dealt with.

This is just a story to lead into something bigger later, for now. If you really feel a terrible urge to get involved, contact me via PM or IRC.

Ah, the spoils of war. The great thing about winning battles was that the other side's equipment became your equipment, which could also be translated into money. This was the part Yoritomo enjoyed most, aside from territory, and the Ashikaga hadn't been anchored since the days of Kagekatsu, the Ashikaga daimyo.

Those had been the days. Golden pavilions, fortified castles, and more koku than seemed possible to acquire. Over a hundred years before Yoritomo's and Toljuri's time, to be sure, but those had been the glory days when it had seemed that it was the daimyo who had control over the nation and not Yorinaga. Virtual control over the Council of Elders, tens of thousands of soldiers at Kagekatsu's beck and call...

But the demon had been underestimated. A rebellion had ended in bloody, humiliating failure, and Kagekatsu, though neither stupid nor inept, had fallen to the guillotine and with him had gone the zenith of Ashikaga strength.

Or so it had seemed. With the defeat of Kagekatsu, thousands of Ashikaga warriors had become ronin, organizing under the banner of this or that relative of Kagekatsu, and so the legacy of the great Western Rebellion had never truly died out. Now the remnants of the Ashikaga were little more than very good bandits, under the leadership of the twin brothers Toljuri and Yoritomo. Lately Toljuri had left Earth with a few hundred ronin to fight the battles of Kajali Mars and so Yoritomo had been left on Earth to follow this or that escapade, dodging Liangjin on the surface and dwarves down below, carving out a niche before a stronger opponent forced him onwards. Down below the troops had been forged into excellent engineers, afterall, the only thing one needs to claim land underground is a shovel, as the dwarves figured out long ago.

All of this Nilozor knew and took into account. He had his orders from the Gabiluzbad, and he would carry them out. As Captain of the Barukzigil, he was paramount to the second-in-command of the army. His name meant Moon Flame, and it suited him well. His armor was brilliant white, as was his hair and weaponry. Personal feats of valor were only exceeded by Azaghal Nardukher, and the two had fought side to side in battle numerous times and were fast friends. But first and foremost Nilozor was a soldier, and he would no sooner question the Gabiluzbad's orders than hopskip off a cliff. It was time to go.

A laughing group of friends sat around a pitiful campfire, all of them clad in armor, for after the last militia attack none dared go about unprepared for assault. All around them men milled about or were asleep in tents, and for the most part seemed quite melancholy.

"Any idea where we are off to next?" a short man inquired, sounding a bit unsure.

"A tomb," said another man darkly. This one turned and eyed the others with a look of annoyance on his face.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means Yoritomo had overplayed his cards. We've sacked one too many dwarven outpost. There's only one thing we will be fighting, and I'll give you a hint: Its clad in silver-colored powered armor and faster than Nagao over here is in the sack." This warranted a few worried chuckles, but no one seemed very eager to continue the conversation or attempt some optimism. Most of them simply turned to a bit too much sake to clear up the shadow hanging over their heads. Until, of course, they heard the explosions. This particular calm before the storm turned out to be one of the shorter ones.

The Gabiluzbad's elite moved fast. Very fast. And they knew every nook and cranny of subterranean Liang. It was their job. The Ashikaga, on the other hand, were not as lucky. But Luck had not totally abandoned them. They still had one last trump card: Their family name.

What could only be described as a position above that of the ronin were some fifty Barukzigil, probably overkill for the not more than a thousand Ashikaga down below. At the head of them, shining brilliantly, was Nilozor. He had his orders, and he didn't particularly like them. His Barukzigil had the same feeling, but they could no more disobey orders than sprout wings and fly to Azangathol. It was built into them. Some people believed free will could never be totally blocked out, that philosophy was not Azaghal's. With sufficient sheltering and early indoctrination warriors would follow any cause, it was hardwired into their brain.

And then came the complicated series of gestures in iglishmek, dwarven gesture-language. And the armored figures of the Barukzigil exploded downwards onto the Ashikaga camp. Nilozor was armed with ivory powered armor, surmounted by a great powered axe currently attached to his back. An assault rifle was in his hand now, and attached to his hands were two Dwarven Fire-throwers.

The first reaction the stunned ronin had was to throw up their hands and surrender. Many did, as practically invulnerable Barukzigil came down, guns blazing leaded..but no. The assault rifles of the Silver Axes were set only to stun, and over the din of fleeing and fighting ronin could be heard a deafening roar, which turned out to be a voice speaking in High Liangite. "ATTENTION ASHIKAGA REBELS, THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND YOU WILL BE UNHARMED. RESISTING WILL RESULT IN PARALYSIS AND POSSIBLE DEATH." This message played over and over again as the battle came quickly to a close. Twenty ronin to one Barukzigil was hardly fair odds, and even attempting to mob them resulted in quick stunning, or, in extreme cases, death for a few of the attackers.

Yoritomo, for his part, ordered his men to quietly give up the fight. He wasn't an idiot, and he realized that the dwarves had some reason for not simply outright killing them. They had every reason to, but they weren't. Why?

Eventually, alone and clothed only in a gold and purple kimono, he exited his gold pavilion and was quietly taken prisoner by two Silver Axes, who began to lead him somewhere. Judgement Day.

So this is him... the great Captain of the dwarves. Shorter than I had imagined.

Yoritomo, though clad in his simple kimono, unarmed and seemingly harmless, still looked every bit the equal of the power armored captain of the Barukzigil in front of him. Yoritomo's skin was unusually dark for a Liangjin, his hair was long and his face could be described as handsome. He looked every bit the noble lord.
In contrast, Nilozor looked more like a dwarven wizard, a look he shared with Azaghal, though it was literally a case of white and black. Everything about the captain was brilliantly white, from his wizardly snow-white beard to his icy eyes and ivory armor. Nilozor's look was one of pure distate, Yoritomo looked calm.

He hasn't killed me and he wants to, it's all over their faces. Which means, of course, he's got orders from someone higher up. And this guy is about as high up as you get, which means that the Lord of the Dwarves himself has something in store for me. And by the look on this guy's face, its not anything too painful for me. It also means that, for now, we are untouchable.

"You are Ashikaga Yoritomo?"

"In the flesh."

"You and your clan are under arrest until further notice." Nilozor made a sign in iglishmek. A Barukzigil walked forward to 'escort' him, and it was at this time that Yoritomo realized that there would be no parleying here. Not with Nilozor. He was a criminal of the highest degree, and too let everyone know he was being....kept alive? bargained with? whatever the dwarves planned to do that didn't involve the loss of his limbs, would just not do. There would be time to crank up the propaganda machine later, for now it was exactly what it was: A capture by Azaghal's Silver Axes of the most notorious criminal in Liang.

At this point the purple-and-gold clad warrior attempted to black out. There was no point in taking in surroundings now, he would not be attempting any raids on the dwarves. He was vaguely of moving through the roots of the mountain ranges that crisscrossed Liang, a sort of all-roads-lead-to-Rome network on tunnels and levels that ended up in some sort of vast underground cavern that bottlenecked in a tiny bridge over a huge chasm, too wide for even the Barukzigil's jumps to carry them over. Instead they proceeded with expert caution, and before long they were at the great western door of Barak-dum, the capital of the Dwarven Empire. Many huge, indecipherable runes marked the door as locked with enough magic to give God himself a headache in breaking through. This, of course, was one of many doors in many tunnels that led into different levels of fifty or so different elevations that made up Barak-dum, a name that meant Axe-mansions or hall of axes, a throwback to ancient times where wars between men and dwarves were as common as the battles under its gates. In those days the demon had managed to get to Barak-dum's gates many times, but always the doors defied his infernal abilities and always a new shield-wall of dwarves arose to drive him out, shining Barukzigil leading determined fyrd to defense of the kingdom.

Yoritomo knew this, but didn't especially care. The human presence in Barak-dum was so small as to be almost entirely non-existent, but Ashikaga was one of the few who had seen the halls before, had been thoroughly amazed the first time, stunned the second time, in glorious remembrance the third time, and mildly amused the fourth. After awhile everything wonderful loses its charm, and in this way Barak-dum held no wonder for the ronin.

His destination, of course, did. The winding streets and Nilozor's purposeful jumps knew he had but one destination: Gathol Gabiluzbadul.

Somewhere very far away from the deep places of Liang, millions upon millions of miles away, in fact, the slightly younger brother of Ashikaga Yoritomo was milling about in a great circular enclosure, flipping a coin and looking at letter he had in his hand. He was, in fact, on Mars, the Red Planet. Another peculiar fact was that he wasn't on Liangite territory. That wasn't for lack of it on Mars. The dwarves controlled the entire North Pole of Mars*, the watery expanse known as Barazun, a Khuzdul word meaning simply 'Red Land'. For his part, Ashikaga Toljuri thought they should have named it the 'Dark wateryish land with a small section of brownish-tinted ice near the top part', but he had never been particularly good with names and he supposed that the soil at the bottom might possibly be red, or atleast with a mild crimson tint to it after the latest scuffle with the mindflayers, as was the custom on Mars where the ground was always red (whether it was because of blood or iron, or some combination of the two, was irrelevant). No, Toljuri and the shard of Ashikaga ronin he had taken with him were nowhere near the dwarven colony on Mars, infact they were quite a ways south, in a small piece of landlocked territory known as Kajal Mars, which was currently involved in a large corporate war with a Valinor, Menelmacari, Pilonese, and several other national corporations he couldn't really remember ('I need to blow this, this, and this up and then get back before the hornets realize their nest was just hit by a grenade' was his main train of thought) over a large section of maglev for Zvarinograd. By the large amount of smoking holes that had been Valinor workstations, he felt he was winning. But this letter... he mused, Yoritomo wouldn't call for me unless it was urgent, or rather...profitable. Stupid bastard shouldn't have stirred up the dwarves. Surely he doesn't expect me to abandon my contract here? But, in his head, he knew that was exactly what he was going to do. Ah, but it does say he needs me on Mars for just a bit longer for...ye gods, what IS he planning?" Toljuri stroked his goatee, absently sharpened his already razor-sharp sword, and idly performed usual maintenance on his considerable arsenal of weaponry. Corporations were pretty loaded, he had to admit, but the way Yoritomo was talking he was making pocket change right now.



*But certainly were not building objects of amusement for children on it, mind.

tag

Any chance for involvement later on?

Oh yes, plenty of chance for involvement later. Right now, though, there's really nothing anyone else could know about. Later on, of course, there will be enough...international news to warrant some attention. ^_^ Right now its just pretty much scripted and only a few nations will be involved.

Oh yes, plenty of chance for involvement later. Right now, though, there's really nothing anyone else could know about. Later on, of course, there will be enough...international news to warrant some attention. ^_^ Right now its just pretty much scripted and only a few nations will be involved.

Ok. I've just been looking around for some RPs to get involved in, and I like your style.

"Kaunas, do you know why I've sat here for as long as I have?"

Casimir Kaunas was the second-in-command of the human government, but like most in that very same government, his title was simply 'Lord'. It wasn't much, but in Dao Yorinaga's government you just seemed to *know* where your place was. And Lord Kaunas' place was second. And this was very odd, because Casimir Kaunas was quite young. Not a day over twenty-three, in fact, and he looked it. He was young, in good shape, looked quite Germanic, from his almost white-blonde hair to his sapphire eyes. On his side was a sword that looked suspiciously like a claymore. He was clad, though, in simple dark armor with a dark cape.

You are very hard to unseat, lord?" Came the unsure reply. Kaunas wasn't sure, but it seemed as if Yorinaga was intent on teaching him lessons.

A sigh came from Lord Yorinaga. His normally obsidian eyes flashed purple for a second. A lot of things were said about Lord Dao Yorinaga. The fact that he had been on the throne since before written history had started lended itself to the fact that he wasn't really human at all. In fact, most considered him a demon.

Not your usual sort of demon. There was no horns, or forked tail, or cackling little voice. No, to the eye he looked like a man. A man perfected, perhaps, but a man nonetheless. Also he must have had about three-hundred-sixty-five sets of the exact same outfit, because he was almost never seen wearing anything else. Black, almost-lamellar looking armor covered him, his hair was drawn up in a bun, and he had a black cape with dark swirls on it with a collar that looked quite vampiric.

Also his dark sword was at his side. Gulveig was its name, and when Yorinaga wielded it, and the demon had not wielded it in a very, very long time, it shown with a dark violet light and no armor of mortal man could hold it. This was unfortunate, because it had rarely been used against mortal man and more often been used against mortal dwarf.

"No, Kaunas." Yorinaga said wearily. Or atleast it sounded weary. Dao Yorinaga was never truly tired. "I am still on this throne because my enemies have never taken me off. A simple answer, but the reason for it is not. Who are my enemies, Casimir?" A rather easier question, Yorinaga thought.

"The Khazad." Kaunas stated simply. Everyone knew the answer to that one.

"Correct. Who leads them?"

"Azaghal Nardukher."

"Correct. Is he stupid?"

"No, lord, he is exceedingly clever and seeks freedom, as all dwarves do." Kaunas replayed this conversation over and over, in his mind. Yorinaga seemed to have almost an obsession with the dwarf lord who reigned below.

"Who are the dwarves' enemies, Kaunas?" This part is new, though the straw-headed man.

"Er. Anything that takes away their freedom, I suppose, and practically every other species that lives in the Underdark hates them. The drow clans, the raptor packs, the xenomorph hives, the beholder caverns, the drider dens, and the Illithid above all."

"Right again, Casimir. What breeds insurrection?"

"Strength, sir."

"Is Azaghal not in a position of strength?"

"Admittedly yes, sir. Our colones are all dwarven, the dwarves outnumber us 60/40, and our allies are dwarven allies, not allies of the Liangjin. In reality, sir, we are two different countries...."

"Stop there. Two different countries, Kaunas, that is the keypoint. Dwarves are like weeds, Casimir, you give them space and they spread everywhere. We have ensured that the fleet and the Martian troops are equal fights, but the outlying colonies will remain in dwarven hands. This means...."

"We must find more resources."

"No, Kaunas. We must find people who hate the dwarves. And it just so happens..."

The conversation faded into the background of Sauranero, but in two other places two other conversations went much the same way. One was on the red planet, between Ashikaga Toljuri and an unnamed benefactor. The other was deep, deep down in the earth, between a certain Ashikaga Yoritomo and a named benefactor. His name? Azaghal.

Two men shook hands and then hugged. On the right was Yoritomo, taller and slightly more ragged, on the left was Toljuri, shorter but no less tough. Fraternal twins. Heirs to the Ashikaga name. Reunited.

Oh, it had been awhile. On Mars, Toljuri had been informed of Azaghal's plots (which seemed more like orders, but who was he to complain), schemes, and ambitions. The brothers had been given a choice: Agree or die. Of course, that was like offering a man the choice of spending eternity in paradise with lots of scantily clothed women or choosing death. Toljuri and Yoritomo tended towards the former. Not to mention that Azaghal had many, many axes. And with the two segments of the Ashikaga united, they were stronger than before, and growing stronger. There is alot you can do with alot of money, and Azaghal, Nilozor, and the bandits had a lot of money. And time. As that haunting 60s song proclaimed, Time was on their side. Every passing moment, Yorinaga and Kaunas and Rigul grew weaker.

Rigul. A relatively new name on the register, the young replacement for High Admiral Vytautas Karyu, who had at the hands of the Tyranids. Antaru Rigul, the new High Admiral and Star Marshal, et al, was new but brilliant. He commanded the Liangite warfleets well, and he was also a proper anti-Khuzdul (or atleast, a pro-Liangjin), and he was definitely keen on not letting the dwarves' have too much power over the fleets.

Which had been impossible, the High Admiral knew. The dwarves' only interest know was space and their colonies, of which only one was on this Earth, and that was one was more guarded than their own capital. Azangathol and Barazun were colonies manned exclusively by dwarves, and about half of his personnel were dwarven. Enough to make it a fight, if it ever came to it.

Ah, but on Mars, Yorinaga's wiles had gave them a fighting chance. With the Tyranids there, Barazun's manpower would just not suffice, now would it? No, but there was always a handy detachment of equal numbers of men to fight alongside the dwarven contingent. Now Mars, previously closed to them, could be opened. Barazun could not be taken with no additional manpower, that was sure, but would Barazun be needed, with the amount of Liangjin in their current area fighting Tyranids? Why, the troops could practically start their own nation.

Ah, but Barazun could be neutralized. Oh yes. Certain...elements lurked in its deeps, and more aesthetically pleasing but no less hungry elements could be found on its planet, hungry for a taste of dwarven flesh.

A small submarine steamed out of Zaramzahar, capital of Barazun. This was no strange occurence, submarines in Barazun's waters were as common as minnows in a stream. What was unusual was its crew. They were all human.

There was a crucial flaw in Yorinaga's plan: Azaghal was plotting right back. Dwarven money mobilized itself as the equal of any of the demon's wiles, and Lord Azaghal was possessed of a mind almost the equal of his infernal counterpart. With one arm he would tip the balance outside Earth, with the other he would raise up a viper to strike at Yorinaga's heart. Old blood ran deep, and old causes never truly die. And demons are never popular rulers. Charisma, ancestry, and money went so very far in a land of tyrants and unemployed soldiery.


All coming together....like clockwork arranged in an atomic bomb with a large fuse. All it would take was a spark. A single spark. There no question of if. Now it was only when.

The scene is an obscure Liangite mountain-town. Off in the distance is a Buddhist monastery, but it had considerably less pilgrims than the packed tavern down the road which seemed to mock it with its promise of more.... imminent pleasures.

Inside the scene was one of veritable sonic might, and screaming at the top of your lungs seemed necessary to even be heard. The tavern was so large that bar fights were considered localized affairs, bar wars were another thing entirely.

It was here, in this obscure mountain-town, that the leaders of most all of the Liangite ronin were gathered around one table, most clad in simple kimonos, but shadowed by heavily armed guards that did nothing to help the tension in the atmosphere. They hated to use the word, but Yoritomo and Toljuri, the most famous and powerful of the ronin warlords, had summoned them here. Promises of riches and control, whispers of cooperation, and dark rumors of even grander enterprises floated around the gathered mercenary captains.

And then they had appeared. In almost iridescent kimonos, through which the official Ashikaga colors of gold and purple were most evident, appeared the two brothers, seemingly apparating out of thin air. No guards were visible, but both brothers had enough of a reputation as fighters that none was too eager to join the ranks of headless bodies who had tried their hands against Yoritomo and Toljuri before.

All here...Takeda and Matsudaira, Mori, Shimazu, Kaeda, Oda, and nearly all of the minor leaders.

Representatives of several hundred thousand men, all told. Can they all be convinced?

A few of the rowdier leaders grew restless. Cries of "what are we here for?" and whispers of discontent began to grow as the brothers remained quiet, surveying the crowd.

Finally, raising his voice somewhat to be heard over the malcontent and then raising it more to be heard over the background noise, Yoritomo spoke. "Uneasy and restless after only a few moments of waiting for a comrade, and yet you would be silent and suggestible after millenia of uncaring, infernal rule?"

This remark shamed most of them into silence. A few dissenters continued hurried whispering.

Toljuri turned to his brother. "Shall we tell them, then?" He remarked just a bit too loudly. All grew silent, and the great destroyer of men (and cats), curiosity, set in.

"I suppose so," replied Yoritomo, and turned in mock weariness towards the nigh-on hundreds of captains.

"Brothers! I hear your annoyance towards us, and cannot fathom how spirits as free and terrible as eagles have remained oppressed under Yorinaga's yoke? Look amongst yourselves! Content with raids and scuffles, wars over territories that aren't yours, revenges on various daimyo who hire others of you to kill your fellows. We are ronin! Masterless! And yet we accept an evil master! What answer have you?"

Murmuring resumed. A few cries of "none!" illicited a millisecond long smile from Toljuri. Others seemed shocked or annoyed, still others were nodding and speaking with those same fellows. A somewhat loud movement was espousing the impossibility of anything other than their current course. Yoritomo heard this and spoke again.

"Impossible, you say? Impossible? Look at those assembled! Count the number of men at their command, for I know you keep distrustful tabs on your brothers! Add them together, captains, and tell me it is impossible. The Ashikaga will aid you in this, of that I am sure."

Someone began to yell. "Impossible, again, I say. Look, ronin, at who would stir us to rebellion. It is none other than the Ashikaga, and do we not know what their ancestors accomplished? The great Kagekatsu, whose rebellion was nothing but failure? Whose stupidity ensured only that Yorinaga destroyed him and any glory or honor left in the Ashikaga name? No, men, it is impossible, nothing more than a pipe dream. Let your ears not be fooled."

"And a glorious failure it was! Lord Kagekatsu, rest his soul, had the idea but not the means! He did not have the support and the power that rests among the sum of our parts! He did not have what we have!" Yoritomo said, almost pleadingly.

"And what," continued the prior dissenter, "do we have that he did not? Money? Support? There is not strength enough in the ronin clans to destroy Yorinaga. We are disunited because we are poor, in money and support. No, once more I say that you, your brother, and your ancestor were all fools of the highest degree. Once more I ask you, what do we have that Kagekatsu had not?"

An axe whirled through the air and split the man's skull in half. A tall, dark form landed on the stage, and terrible, burning eyes blazed their image into the brain of every man present. Lord Azaghal smiled a horrible grin, and the Burkushathur grew dark. "Me." He said simply.

Yoritomo turned to the dwarf lord, and whispered quietly. "Was that really necessary?"

The dwarf turned, an amused look on his face. "Yes." He turned again to the ronin. "See now that you have something Kagekatsu did not! The support of the entire dwarven empire! Men of intellect! You know that the dwarves' alone are more numerous and more powerful than the demon, how much swifter would he fall with you behind us? Now, I will implore you one last time, and this last time only. The demon's time is past, and with your support or without it the Liangjin will be freed. You may either be at the top of the new age, as lords and nobles of men, or you will be at the bottom, scorned for letting slip a chance to remove a great evil from the pages of history.

And if only the yearning for good is not enough, let me tell you that the riches of the dwarves' have not been exaggerated." A smattering of mithril coins were flung out into the crowd, where they dropped. Not a soul picked one up.

The dwarf waved a hand at the two brothers. "These two will lead you, and I will support you. What say you?"

In an obscure Liangite mountain-town, two orange-clad monks turned momentarily towards the far-off tavern, where an affirming roar of approval could be heard even here.


That town was not the only theater of action. On Mars, a submarine steamed towards a dark destination. Illithid territory.

The demon who had been the subject of much defacing in that curious, obscure mountain-town where the ronin lords had been won over to Azaghal's cause was sat on a dark chair at a black table, curiously drumming his fingers in...surely not..but yes, it was anxiety. Even the most powerful of beings grows nervous as his plots near completion. Lord Casimir knew what this day heralded, knew that today was the day when all the demon's plots came together in one ballooning mushroom cloud of destruction.

Down below, seated on a gilded throne, Gabiluzbad Azaghal Nardukher had much the same feeling of nervous exhilaration. Captain Nilozor was back after bolstering Barak-dum's outlying villages with militia, for rumors had reached the Great Lord's ear of unrest among the disparate non-dwarven elements that had never been truly subdued. Today was a day of reckoning, the day when he turned the key in the vast machinery that would end with the leaders of the Liangjin brought down, and the race of men subordinated and second-place to the race of dwarves.

Both were confident of success. Both had intricate and destructive plots designed to bring the other down. Neither saw the holocaust of annihilation that would come about as a result.

In those watery depths the submarine, piloted by men, was now deep into the territory of the mindflayers. The great stone citadels of Martian R'lyeh were vast and inhabited by powerful beings, but the human fanatics that plied the ocean depths were neither susceptible to their Call nor to the call of reason. Long ago the demon lord had found that religious fanaticism and illegal substances combine to form a cadre of devoted but mindless servants which were easily sacrificable to great ends. And these men, if they could be called that, saw only their devotion to that great, lurking infernal power in Sauranero through the drug-induced haze, and even the psychic pryings of the Illithid and their antediluvian lord were not penetrative enough, especially on the fringe of their territory. You cannot drive an insane person to madness.

And that same vision, of the demon lord's wishes fulfilled, would comfort them as the small submarine slammed full-speed into a small, relatively unimportant Illithid citadel, creating an explosion in both physical reality and in the minds of the collective Illithid.

Further south, on the windswept battlefields of Qaaolchouraav Mars, Takar Tyuri, general of the combined human forces fighting the Tyranids, ceased his daily meetings with Azemilcar, general of the dwarven forces on Mars. No more quiet sessions would be held, and there would be no fraternizations between Khuzd and Liangjin any longer. The split between the two Liangite factions grew deeper than the line that separated them from the oncoming horde.

And on another planet entirely, in the largest mountain range of Liang, hundreds of thousands of deadly soldiers marshalled themselves under the banner of Ashikaga Yoritomo, to the chagrin of the Loyalist intelligence agents there, and hundreds more arrived every hour, adding to the would-be emperor's legions.

In the deep places of Liang where even the dwarves' reign did not hold, a darker, nightmarish horde was forming to march forth against Azaghal's kingdom.

The spark had fallen on the tinder. Now the inferno began.

They could not believe it.

So certain they had been with their position.

So certain they had been that the northern creatures would not dare to touch them, if simply because of the agreement they had made with them. They knew that the northern creatures feared them as much as they hated them. They knew that they would not dare.

So certain that when one of their odd machines hit the underwater walls of one of the many dark citadels, they simply could not believe it.

Those present simply watched as the machine swam closer, dumbfounded. They simply watched as the machine came through, collapsing most of the citadel, crushing their flesh beneath the rubble.

Pain of the flesh.

Suffering of the mind.

Death of the whole.

The atlantians were silent, but the dying Starspawns cried out, as well did the younger ones.

They were not many, but their screams were clear. Clearer than the clearest of crystals.

Not a single death of their kind went unnoticed. Especially not this close. There had been many quieter screams before these, but these were... Local.

Yes. These were local.

The final thoughts, the final imagery the dying had seen swept into the consciousness of every Illithid that still lived on the planet. So strong were they, that they practically silenced the mental commune for hours.

And they could not believe it. They knew, but it was unbelievable.

Those in the north had broken the agreement. They had proven themselves untrustworthy. Honorless. Cowardly. Unworthy to live.

Their God had been angered.

He demanded that those who follow Him, shall destroy them. Any creature that attempts to stand in their way shall be exterminated or enslaved. The northern civilization was to be wiped out, one way or the other.

Yes. They would be shown their place in the grand scheme of things.

Simple was their strategy. First would they destroy the domes beneath the sea. Then would they continue into the surface.

So many were the atlantians that the sea turned green. So many were they that had there not been a great, thick coating of ice upon the surface of the sea, their movement would have caused a great tidal wave.

A war was about to begin.

A string of curses could be heard all over Mars, as Andvari Nardukher, Lord of Barazun, saw his kingdom's doom. At first only rage filled his mind, the Illithid and their God had finally shown their true colors!

But then his logic came back to him. Even with the awakening of their leader, of which he had heard only whispers, they had refrained from breaking their pact. There was just one more option: Something had angered them.

And thats where his intelligence had come in. It was only a matter of time before a submarine came up missing. Near Illithid territory...and now there were even eyewitness reports that it had not been dwarves who had clambered aboard to send it on its dark errand.

And Andvari was not stupid, and above all he was distrustful. The clues were minute, but they were there. Yorinaga had not bothered to cover his tracks, he hadn't needed to.

What could he tell the world? The truth? "Er, sorry, but it was really some humans that managed to commander one of our subs and smash it into a fort. It wasn't us. Honest." Everyone knew the dwarves hated the mindflayers with a passion.

And the Gabiluzbad had said a war was brewing. He hadn't expected Yorinaga to fight back.

A shining dwarf whirled and jumped, sprayed liquid fire and spewed lead, dodged and hacked. Nilozor, captain of Azaghal's Barukzigil, was in trouble. He had been patrolling alone, angry over Azaghal's freeing of the ronin he had captured. And now he was here, surrounded by giant saurian horrors with iron-hard claws that slashed and ripped. Each of the huge raptors was the size of a semi-truck, and he hadn't expected them. He should've known, all outlying sectors of Barak-dum were reporting increased activity, and the militia was practically entrenched and in combat. A detachment of dwarves had been annihilated out here, but he had something they didn't: Armor. Burning corpses of the giant dinosaurs littered the hall he was in, but new ones leaped and spun like martial arts masters, huge foot-claws scything towards his exposed head. There was nothing for it. A running retreat was his only option.


And then he saw a new wave enter, and this time there were dark shapes among them, fleeting, lanky, but ultimately more dangerous than the enemies he was facing now.

Drow. Gunfire erupted, and for a split-second the foremost dwarven warrior resigned himself to death. And then they were there. Barukzigil. Ricocheting shots filled the air, columns of liquid fire scorched dark elves and lizards alike, and where the lines met great power-axes separated limbs from bodies.

The Moon-Flame exhaled. And his enemies, a mere scout party, cut their losses and withdrew behind a conjured wall of flame from some dark sorceror. Compared to his usual business, Nilozor figured this a major assault.

To their masters, allied and forged in alliance through...persuasian from the demon, it was merely a probing attack. And when Nilozor returned, he would find that they had occured all over the frontier towns, by different species and races, but characterized by a small assault followed by a quick withdrawal with the arrival of the Silver Axes. It was time he reported to Azaghal.

But the dwarf-lord was not the only one with problems. Oh no. On the surface, Yorinaga's legions began to congregate around the outskirts of Suntop, preparing themselves for the coming fight with the ever-growing army of Yoritomo and Toljuri.

The two leaders, meanwhile, were preparing a move that would have made Houdini proud. Skirmishes broke out between their respective lines, but as of yet Yorinaga was waiting to spear into their lines. A brief stalemate reigned as the ronin lords' armies grew, augmented by mercenaries bought with Azaghal's credit card.


And the demon lord grew restless. Scattered reports of logistics lines being harassed by rapidly disappearing raiders made him anxious. For now the dwarves' had not openly declared war, and for now it was only battles between their respective pawns as both tried to destroy the other without getting involved. And still there were other theaters.

All along the Qaaolchouraav Line, Azemilcar and Takar knew what was going on. Legions of Illithid and Atlanteans marching on Barazun, and they were helpless to save Barazun, for infront of them ravening hordes of Tyranids rushed at them. And just on the other side of a palisade two sides that hated each other were standing side by side. It was a matter of time before the 'peace' between Dao and Nardukher broke, and then where would they be?


And in space and the air, where the two races were integrated, the human Sky Marshal, Antaru Rigul, fortified his ships against themselves. There was no official policy of segregation, but there may as well be, for now on all of the massive aerospace carriers there were dwarven and human sections. He was outnumberd, only slightly, but he had positioned himself in such a way that the cards were in his field. Except one. The Charon detachment, positioned at Azangathol, was 100% dwarven, and could serve as the core of a new, all-dwarf fleet. He would watch carefully.


And deep beneath Barazun, submarines stopped roving and formed circular, protective rings around the domes, torpedoes armed. There were many, but they were small and exposed. Soon enough, minefields would go up, though Andvari was unsure whether they would help. Right now his plan was to...survive. The domes were built to survive overwhelming odds, and their inhabitants were underneath layers of blast doors that separated tunnel after tunnel from the tunnels higher up. One might wall and flood, and a blast door would close, and no progress would be made for the invaders. But what good is it to entomb yourself in rock, with legions of ravening slavers on the other sides? The Uzbad struggled to find a positive answer.

Once the blood of their kind has been drawn by outsiders, the hatred of the Illithids is infinite. They simply stop caring. Caring about the lives of their own and of those around them. All there is is hate. As long as those who have wronged them still draw breath, that is all they are and all they have. Hatred binds them together more than anything else.

As long as their enemies live, there can be no peace.

The innumerable mass of mindless Atlantians swam ever closer to the domes of the dwarves, not caring about the metallic objects between them and their objectives. They were so many that it seemed as though they were a single entity as opposed to millions, hundreds of millions of separate ones.

It was no single dome they were after, no. All those they knew of were being targeted by the Atlantian swarms. Their attacks were by no means limited to those within the sea in between the citadels, the Sunken Cities of R'lyeh.

With as many of those creatures there were, attacking too few targets at a time would cause more damage to them than it would to those they were to attack. It would have been redundant. Yes, while they were mad with rage, they still knew that they would need some kind of coordination in their efforts. Excessive stupidity was not one of their traits. The attacks would have to be swift and decisive - nothing should be left to chance. Not a single underwater dome should be, at the very least, left unsieged. And why should they leave any of them alone? There were more than enough Atlantians to spread around. Even now they would be left with a great reserve that they could use to reinforce the "deployed" ones, if there would be a need.

Reaching them and breaking into them would only be the first step - but they had it all thought out.

Their enemies would know fear, and then they would be eradicated.

Two sentries stood shaking at the outermost entrance to Resolute Station, pelted by the unrelenting arctic wind. Though the men were clad in the thickest cold weather gear available, the cold was still biting. A thick layer of frost covered the black helmets and rebreathers of the soldiers.

'Why...why do they do this to us Hruutu?' complained the youngest of the men, shivering. The older soldier stood stoically, saying nothing as he surveyed the landscape. Soon both men were moving in a comical dance of sorts, keeping their circulation flowing and making small talk to pass the time until they were relieved of duty. Hours passed and finally a second detail of men came up to the entrance.

'We're here to relieve you.' said a tall soldier by the name of Hjarlan. Seargant Hruutu nodded and said 'Very well, you bastards can have this place'. The young soldier, Ulver held a hand up over his visor and squinted into the distance, the other soldiers noticing this looked towards the horizon and noticed some figures moving through the haze of snowfall. The men shouldered their rifles and Hruutu ordered the new comers to move forward and challenge them. Hjarlan nodded and pushed his comrade, Trooper Trij, forward. As they moved up they saw the shapes more clearly. Hruutu and, the young Trooper, Irtle, moved to cover the others. Trij pointed his rifle at the creatures 'Halt! Halt now or I'll kill you man!' he screamed. Hruutu loaded a round into the underbarrel shotgun on his rifle slowly as he watched Trij challenge these unwelcome guests.

OOC:

Dont want to wank Sensori. I just assumed you would want to kill everything in Barazun.

OCC: Would it be possible to include mabye a few Robotstanis, perhaps wandering around attached to Aumanii forces as part of some kind of peace exchange thing? (It would be quite favorable for the Aumaniis, who would probably be able to 'patrol' the beautiful beaches of certain systems in the Neu Wirlde cluster). Eh, just an attempt to get involved.

The Illithid would find the domes closest to R'lyeh gone, evacuated and abandoned, home only to a few straggling subs that fired half-heartedly and darted off.

As soon as the deep ones had mobilized those outlying domes had been withdrawn, their populations added to an inner circle of more heavily populated, less easily abandoned domes. And martial law was declared. The few scattered units of regular army forces who hadn't been deployed to Qaaolchouraav Mars became the core of a new fighting force, as the compulsory military service came into effect and Barazun scraped the bottom of its proverbial can, looking for men, any men, to fill the gaps in its defensives.

Frantic messages between Andvari and Azemilcar came up with nothing. Abandon millions of people to certain death and assimilation into the Hive Mind? No, even now the Tyranid menace could not be ignored, even in the face of the siege of Barazun. Yet. Man and dwarf eyed each other, and with a military force as large as the ones under their prospective command? Who knew? For the Qaaolchourans sake, both hoped the false peace between their respective superiors held.

On Liang, 'peace' was definitely not a prevailing word. Skirmishes between the growing ronin horde and the encircling troops of Yorinaga grew ever more violent, ever more large-scale. It was clear agitation was reaching a new heighth, and no one could say how long Yorinaga would permit the Ashikaga control of Suntop to last.

And below, a cruel parody of the situation above was going on, with the roles reversed. Nilozor had a bad premonition, but it didn't take a genius to connect all the attacks on the outskirts of Barak-dum.

But the Moon-Flame didn't believe in sitting here and waiting for them to strike. He had gathered the Barukzigil, put out a call for the militia, and gathered his dwarves for a strike in the dark to figure out exactly what was going on behind the veiled curtains of the non-dwarven Underdark.

Above, Ashikaga Yoritomo was getting reports from spies in the Liangite ranks that the demon himself was commanding his troops, and he knew his moment of truth was now. Could he win?


OOC: LRR, Yoritomo is utilizing his funding as much as he can. Immigration policies into human Liang are lax, and the Ashikaga are hiring mercenaries left and right. If mercs are smart, they'll contact the dwarves, who can then get them easily past the cordon Yorinaga has place around the rebels.

Shivering in the biting cold, two soldiers on patrol duty shuffled, slowly, up to Aumanii soldiers. Twitching a little, as his whiskers were freezing in the cold, the younger of the two patrolmen approached Sergeant Hruutu. Sir, you no doubt by now have noticed what we came here to tell you about, but we shall report it anyway, as is our duty. There is a great horde of ...fishmen-like creatures approaching the base, and they appear to be hostile in the extreme. It would be best to return to the station immediately, and prepare for the, in my opinion, inevitable attack. The patrolman bowed, and began to slowly return to the base.

The fact that the northern creatures had abandoned their closest bases only made the situation easier for those of R'lyeh. Indeed did they find that they were empty. Indeed did they feel the absence of any thought. Indeed did they feel the absence of fear.

Yes. Easier it would be. They would not have to siege them and crush them, no. They would be able to actually use them on a later time. A Sunken City, even one built by outsiders, even one built by their now mortal enemies, would suffice. This simple fact meant that millions more of Atlantians would be available for the attacks on the domes not evacuated. Even if it meant that the northern creatures could now more easily defend themselves...

It did not matter. They would pay the ultimate price for their treachery. No matter how deep they would try to hide, no matter how far they would try to flee.

But the constantly growing wave no longer only concerned the depths. No. Due to the very fact that many Atlantians had nothing to fight against, many of them were sent above the surface. It was a necessary step in their cold calculations: The Atlantians were in such a deep state of insane and almost uncontrollable rage induced by the rage their masters felt that they would simply rip themselves apart if the Illithids had not done what they did. They would fight each other instead.

What the Aumanii saw, as such, was true. A massive horde was coming their way. A massive horde of creatures in berserk rage. Creatures that would not back down or retreat. The Aumanii were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time: While the Illithids hold no malice towards the Auman forces, they do not care if they are of another nationality. They are in the way. They must be dealt with.

The plans of the Illithid are ever changing, in such a way, that they almost seem chaotic to an untrained eye. Almost senseless. There would seem to be no strategic thinking in their attacks, as the hordes simply marched forward, towards the next place they would destroy. But in the long run, they know what they are doing. They know.

Yes.

They know.

Hruutu watched as the ominous form of the liger disappeared in the worsening snowfall. The wind seemed to howl and scream at the four men making them grow more nervous. A thick smog formed in front of them, not wanting know what it was the men radioed First-line-bunker, telling them to expect them. Quickly, the men ran back to safety and the howling stopped and was replaced by the sound of thousands of footfalls. Daring a look behind him, Trooper Trij was horrified to see that they were being pursued by what seemed to be thousands of slavering beasts. Trij's eyes widened 'Dear shit!" he blurted as he turned and ran as fast as he could, outpacing the others.

-----

Finally the men made it to First-line-bunker and were promptly let in by their concerned platoon mates. 'Whats going on? blurted a trooper who was manning a machine gun. Hruutu peeled off his rebreather, revealing a long, scarred face 'You'll know it when you see it. We'll need reinfocements for sure...' Trij, panic clear on his face said 'There's thousands of them! we have to get out of here now!' A tall man walked into the main bunker, slipping on a black storm coat. Hruutu saluted 'Captain Ulster, sir.' the Captain saluted back and said 'What the hell is going on here?' before anyone could answer the Captain a howling was heard outside. Ulster stepped forward, flanked by the sentries and gunners alike, and peered outside. The Captain couldn't believe his eyes. Thousands upon thousands of monsters ran screaming towards them 'Open fire! Open fire! ordered Ulster. The sharp crack of machine gun fire filled the main bunker as Captain Ulster left to his command center. Hruutu followed Ulster and ordered the sentries to help the gunners.

OCC: Liang, I was looking for something more...official...but whatever. If Auman says yes, this'll be the exchange troops, if no, mercenaries.

IC:

Two figures walk across the rusty landscape of Mars, both relatively short in stature. Made to look incredibly plump due to the amount of clothing that these two have piled upon themselves, they walk around, occasionally stopping and pointing, radioing as well.

Close up, nobody would have trouble identifying them as Robotstani in origin, although by their looks not robots themselves. Over the traditionally grubby and drab robotstani military fatigues, which hearken back to the ancient Soviet Union on Earth, they wear casual, loose-fitting armor that could deflect shell splinters and shrapnel, but not something built for heavy, close-in combat.

One of the figures carries a long-barreled rifle with rifle-grenades stuffed into an archaic rucksack, and the other sports a machine-pistol with an AP grenade launcher fixed under the barrel. Nothing special, in fact, as is the case with most Robotstani personal weaponry, quite outdated, but reliable and easy to use.

On their shoulders, the two figures have patches of the Palmach Infantry, the Robotstani all-purpose ground unit.

They stop, alarmed by an eerie stirring of the landscape some kilometers distant, almost as if the very ground itself was a seething mass of people.

At that moment, the rush of men running to their positions in the gun nests, the techs readying the spheres, and the pilots speeding to their posts all drowned out the shrill siren of the base alert, only adding to the general sense of panic all through the base. The commander of the Realitanian troops at the base, obviously unnerved by the commotion, hurriedly radioed the Aumanii Area Command. This..attack by the fishmen has given us little time to prepare, but my soldiers and i are still ready and willing to meet this alien threat. What would you have us do?

OCC: Liang, I was looking for something more...official...but whatever. If Auman says yes, this'll be the exchange troops, if no, mercenaries.

IC:

Two figures walk across the rusty landscape of Mars, both relatively short in stature. Made to look incredibly plump due to the amount of clothing that these two have piled upon themselves, they walk around, occasionally stopping and pointing, radioing as well.

Close up, nobody would have trouble identifying them as Robotstani in origin, although by their looks not robots themselves. Over the traditionally grubby and drab robotstani military fatigues, which hearken back to the ancient Soviet Union on Earth, they wear casual, loose-fitting armor that could deflect shell splinters and shrapnel, but not something built for heavy, close-in combat.

One of the figures carries a long-barreled rifle with rifle-grenades stuffed into an archaic rucksack, and the other sports a machine-pistol with an AP grenade launcher fixed under the barrel. Nothing special, in fact, as is the case with most Robotstani personal weaponry, quite outdated, but reliable and easy to use.

On their shoulders, the two figures have patches of the Palmach Infantry, the Robotstani all-purpose ground unit.

They stop, alarmed by an eerie stirring of the landscape some kilometers distant, almost as if the very ground itself was a seething mass of people.

OOC:

This is just wrong on so many levels. Auman and the LRR have never reconciled in any rp. Never spoken after the bombing. Aumanii military high command still has a shoot on sight policy for the LRR. This is also on the northern ice cap. Not the rusty red plains of southern Mars. If you want in, go as Mercs. And make sure no Aumanii see you or you'll be treated like the monsters.

These were different. The Illithids could feel it, as well as they could see it.

They were larger than the northern creatures. Their thoughts were different, lighter, maybe. Time did not weigh as heavily on them as those of the north. It was almost as though the difference between an adult and child. These were like children when compared to the smaller creatures. A younger species, perhaps? Ah, yes. They were humans. Yes, they were not the same, yet they were the same. Death would be all that they deserve, for they are attempting to stall the inevitable.

The stench of fear was obvious, and it simply worked to agitate the already enraged swarm even further.

Not a single Atlantian was affected by the pain caused by the odd slug-throwing machines these humans used on them. Not a single one. But the ones slowed down by the constant firing, the ones torn apart by it were quickly trampled by the ones behind them. Their blood colored the bloodthirsty masses in their red color, as well as it did to the snow.

The few Illithids that were present, making the writhing mass move towards the wanted direction, found the reactions of these creatures almost amusing. But they were understating the massive horde. There were not thousands of rampaging berserkers coming at them. There were millions of them.

Millions.

They did not care for anything else but the killing. That was all they lived for now. All they were to do. It was their... Destiny.

(OOC: Oh yeah, I'm having problems with the damn internet back home, so... That's why I didn't past any sooner than this. Damnation to my sucky ISP.)

OOC:

This is just wrong on so many levels. Auman and the LRR have never reconciled in any rp. Never spoken after the bombing. Aumanii military high command still has a shoot on sight policy for the LRR. This is also on the northern ice cap. Not the rusty red plains of southern Mars. If you want in, go as Mercs. And make sure no Aumanii see you or you'll be treated like the monsters.

OCC: Ok, sorry to take up your time everyone.

"Millions of the contemptuous trout have swarmed ashore to assault the Aumanii and Liger bases. Not that I have much pity for them, but right now our odds aren't looking good." A small dwarf saluted Lord Andvari before scurrying off.

How to stop them...it all depended on his ability to hold out. For millions of dwarves sakes, he hoped he could hold out.


The dwarf who had just delivered the report, a certain Thorin who bore no relation to his more famous namesake, ran around, directing messengers and spreading the message himself. The weak, young, and the infirm were in the deepest levels of the tunnel systems guarded by the domes and blast doors, and everyone else was issued rifles and axes. Only a few were modern, most were old, but any gun was useful against the advance of the Deep Ones.

With Azemilcar in Qaaolchouraav Mars, Thorin was now the ranking military officer in Barazun. He was, in every respect, an excellent replacement for Azemilcar, but he had so little to work with.

As they advanced to the the defensive ring of aquadomes (the center of which was Zaramzahar, the capital and most populated city of Barazun, at over thirty million dwarves, with the added refugees), the Illithid hordes would come upon submarines that darted like schools of fish, deploying minefields in the path of advancing columns of Deep Ones so that they were either bypassed or crossed over at the cost of thousands upon thousands of lives.

And if they chose to bypass them? They'd find themselves in a maze of fields that inevitably sent them on a goose chase. By then, hopefully, the subs would have more ready.


And if they got past? The Liangite Moses' Staff technology, developed with the aid of Sunset, held back the waters for a few miles around the largest aquadomes, and here was where the real defenses began, as tens of thousands of skilled dwarves labored to elaborate ever more on the existing defenses, as ill-trained militia manned them.

But Thorin knew the truth. For all his elaborate preparations, his defenses were, at most, a stalling mechanism. They would come, he would kill them, and they would come again. R'lyeh did not tire. R'lyeh did not sleep. R'lyeh did not feel pain. He silently cursed the name of Dao Yorinaga, as he continued his frantic pacing through the chiseled halls of Zaramzahar.


OOC: Gonna be gone for the weekend, so try not to post too much so I have a chance to catch up when I get back. :) LRR, really, RP'ing a sizable group of mercenaries in Ashikaga's rebellion isn't that bad, but meh. Whatever you want to do.

If there was one thing the Starspawns of R'lyeh were not, it was stupid. They knew that the northern creatures had these things they call "mines". They had found more than enough information about the ways of their neighbors. Of their hate towards the Illithid. Of their culture. Of their way of thought. Even if the Illithids were full of rage, full of hate, it still did not cloud their judgement. It did not affect their train of thought. No. They had survived countless wars, countless planetary catastrophes. This was simply one war more.

The tactics the northern creatures would have worked if the Illithids had simply left their mindless pawns to their own devices. But no, they would not do that. Never would they leave them unsupervised, for they knew that a superior mind can make all the difference in a battle.

Why would they leave them to die, if they can easily help them by at least lowering the risk of these mines?

They had thought of several ways of doing just that. All of them were viable. All of them would be used. Many would still die, but far less than the dwarves had expected.

The Illithids, even the young ones, were able telekinetics. Simple mental prods cause them to detonate. Make one of these mines hit another, cause small chain reactions. This tactic had a downfall, though: The constantly moving horde meant that only so many of these explosives could be made harmless quickly enough.

The Sunken Cities were surrounded by a certain kind of growth the Illithids could control easily enough. That had been done for years, and even now they were using it to their advantage. Even if it was not used by those who kept the Atlantians on their course. It required several of the Starspawns to command it, to make it grow faster than the Atlantians could swim... But still, the growth would easily detonate even more mines. It simply goes close enough, burns and withers away. That was its purpose in life: To protect those the Illithids saw fit.

Since the Atlantian hordes were moving at the speed of the slowest, largest shambler thralls, quite a few of the faster, smaller ones swam into the fields and killed themselves in the process. Less would die at the expense of few. The weak would die, and the strong would go on.

Stupidity was not one of their traits. Acting rashly was not one of their traits. Their combined thoughts constantly changed the way they wage war. All their actions had been thought out at least a million times during the short time this war had been raging on. There was only one goal in their minds, only one objective. The how was what changed, the why was not.

The north would burn, its populace enslaved or killed.

(OOC: Still... My ISP sucks ass. Or maybe it's my DSL box. Which ever, SOMETHING is sucking bigtime.)

deep in the airbase, the head tech sends a frantic message through the ether to..help, to ZMI's mercenaries, ones who have helped before, in other, less dangerous situations.
<<<<<< To ZMI, Mercenary HQ >>>>>>
Help urgently needed at Resolute airbase, northern mars. am under attack by millions of apparently unarmed fishmen....payment to be negotiated after destruction of enemy. Repeat: Help urgently needed, we wont last long under this kind of pressure.

<<<<< End Transmission >>>>>>

OOC -tagged for attenion at some less godforasken time of day- ..oh the napalm she is ah comin <<

General Behl sat rubbing his temples on a folding chair in the highest point of the command tower. His head was searing his vision. Light streaked and blurred and resembled a messy oil painting to his eyes. Damn migraines thought Behl as he stood, receiving a pair of binoculars from his adjutant.

Behl looked out into the featureless wasteland of Barazun. Muzzle flashes were the tell-tale sign of Aumanii bunker positions, which for the time being were holding quite strong. Behl grinned as he saw the disciplined bursts of gunfire and relished in the sound of their reports. 'Excellent work, my boys are doing...tell them that!' exclaimed General Behl. General Behl was elderly in comparison to most Aumanii commanders. Serving thirty years under Balthizar Marduk, though impressive, had not earned him many points with the current administration. Subsequently, due to his former political connections, General Artur Behl was exiled to Resolute Airstation to serve out the rest of his career. Behl was almost ecstatic upon hearing of his men getting into action, seemingly the old General decided to ignore the possible ramifications of conflict in the north and enjoy this dust up.

'General, look.' said Captain Sans, pointing to the thick, black, carpet of enemies assaulting the bunkers. Behl nodded and clapped a hand on Sans' shoulder 'Dont worry man. We can take them, to hell if we have to.' said Behl confidently. May'be I could enjoy this more if it weren't for this damned migraine... Behl thought to himself.

The time was ripe above the waves. Whilst the great mass continued its frantic movement towards its multitude of destinations, there had been quite a few Starspawns within the Sunken Cities actively scanning the minds of their enemies. Looking for vulnerabilities. Looking for things they could abuse. Things that would turn them against their own. There always were those who wished for things they did not have. Things the Illithids could provide them.

Discontentment was what they sought. Loss of belief in their own leaders they sought. They found more than enough of these in many, but only few of those present interested them. It was simple enough. Why would they seek to turn each and every grunt in the warmachine separately, individually, when they could simply go for those who actually command them? These creatures were not fundamentally that much different from the Atlantians. The Traitor Princes were show enough that even the disciplined, the loyal, the elite could be pushed to betray their own.

For their own sake.

For their own lust.

One of them had found... Something. A human, ever so confident. Ever so certain. Of high stature, at least when compared to the others in the location. But there were emotions beneath the calm surface. Uncertainty. Displeasure. Hatred. Fear. Greed. Lust.

Soon, they knew. They all knew.

They whisper almost silently in the minds of those deemed... Suitable, telling them of the power, the wealth they could acquire if they did as the voices told them to. Of the glory they would get. Of how everything would improve if they did as they were told. These whispers were tailored for each and every one of their targets individually. They would only hear what they want to hear.

Some of them would ignore the whispers. Some would be likely to lose their sanity. But this all would be worth it, yes, it would all be worth it, if they could turn even one of them. Even one would be a victory. Even one would mean that they had found a way to affect the human psyche, that they had taken the first step towards understanding their... Neighbors.

The message was received and handled nearly completely by automated agents. The decision making process consulted the Gestalt, and the decision for limited action was taken after a brief consultation with fleet command.

The dozen strong squadron of emergency response Overrun aerospace superiority drones took 23 minutes to dispatch, 8 minutes of transit time from their patrol route and 3 minutes to transit from Martian orbit to conventional in atmospheric flight. Travelling at just a little over 200 metres above the ice shelf at over mach 8 they threw up huge sparkling clouds of ice crystals in their wake, incandescent white drive flames thundering out behind them as they headed from their atmospheric insertion point to the airbase from where the message had been sent. Energy cells already whining four of them broke off to give high atmospheric coverage while the rest bore down upon the air base their heavy plasma guns already giving of an eerie blue glow as they prepared to discharge even as they ran checks on their mounted munitions.

The minefield's effects had been deadened. Thorin Kadarmagan knew the Illithid adapted. He was reminded, somewhat painfully, that he wasn't fighting just Deep Ones. A more terrible and sinister opponent waited in the deeps. One whose minds possessed an extra dimension and a power not understood to the dwarflord Andvari or his generals. Dwarven scientists, on the other hand, had ideas. Had studied Illithid for centuries (albeit of a different species, perhaps) in the wars that had raged in the Early Years. Knew that they fought in another plane in addition to the purely physical one that many other species never utilized except in the most distant ways.

An entirely different plane of warfare, perhaps, but one in which the rules of war still applied. Khalinikhas the dwarf, who had found Khazad-dum and invented dwarven fire, knew that the Illithids scouted and skirmished on the mental plane, ever-increasing before they became full-scale wars raging across the universal psyche, with retreats, advances, maneuvers, deception, and all the facets of modern war.

But when you compared the relative defences of the dwarven and human brains, it was like comparing Constantinople to a palisaded village. The Smith God had seen the destruction of dark gods in the world before he forged the dwarves, saw the corruption which had birthed the orcs, and made his dwarves resistant to all but the most powerful of assaults on the plane the Illithids waged war in, part of the reason the Underdark was a dwarven and not a mindflayer domain.

The runic magic the dwarves' utilized aided them as well. Powerful runes first carved by Mahal and given to Durin the Deathless could, when combined and carved by runemasters, provide buttresses to the walls standing against the attacks on the mind.

All that was irrelevant, now, for the Illithids hardly needed to carry the fight into metaphysical realms if they could win it in the physical one. And Thorin's doubts gnawed at him. The mindfields had been deadened.

But now the Deep Ones grew nigh to a new terrain, a new obstecale. As the Atlanteans grew close to them, there rose a giant funnel where there was no water, simply muddy or sandy land in an expanse a mile or two around the actual domes, the waters held back by Moses' Staff, a giant feat combining gravitational technology learned from Sunset with a good deal of dwarven ingenuity. Moses' Staff, of course, had been designed to hold back vastly less water than it now did, but the dwarves were ingenious when it came to improving and stretching the limits of technojunk. Now the Deep Ones faced a run across a gigantic plain before they reached the dome itself, in somewhere around ten outlying domes and the superdome of Zaramzahar. Here, Thorin hoped he could stall. Here, he planned his masterstroke. Here, the shackled pawns of the malignant Illithid would be given final release. R'lyeh put forth its strength, but Thorin Kadarmagan had prepared for it.

Alas that Thorin Kadarmagan's desperate struggle to keep Barazun alive was the only struggle the dwarves faced, or even the only against Illithids.

For in the depths of Liang, a different kind of mindflayer lurked, one deliberately evil, who worshipped only their collective consciousness and not the God of R'lyeh, who devoured the minds and then directed the bodies of numerous dark races and then used them for ever more nefarious purposes. Ones who mastery of the mind, unfortunately, was not enough to punch through the massive citadel that was the skull of Nilozor the Moon-Flame and the Barukzigil, who lanced into their territory.

The Captain of the Barukzigil was, for the first time in his adult life, scared. Not personally, but for Liang. He got only whispers, he got only rumors, only the coughing spittle and scorned remarks of dying dark elves whose marauding clans had had the misfortune of fighting his probing strikes into the heart of the forming coalition.

Coalition. He shuddered. He had easily repulsed the assaults of this or that lingering race that carved out new caverns so as to escape dwarven rule, but now? They were...he shivered once more. They were unified. Under a council, it seemed, of the leaders of them. The largest, fiercest, oldest alphas of the Utah packs, the eldest Hive Mothers of the xenos, the greatest mages and mightiest fighters of the dark elves, the Tyrants of the eyekin, and the theocraniums of the mindflayers.

This Dark Legion was now mobilizing its resources for a strike on the Hall of Axes where Azaghal waited and pulled the strings that would lead to victory in the brewing race war between Khazad and Liangjin, of which only the first skirmishes were now being fought.

And this preliminary strike....Well. The Barukzigil had barely pierced the lines of the enemies and already the fighting was extremely fierce. Steel-hard talons slashed at him, foetid acid burned his armor, fireballs and bullets grazed him, beams of pure thaumic energy lanced at him, and even through his runic helmet and natural dwarven defenses he heard whispers in the darkest parts of his subconscious (where, it must be said, a human would be hearing screams and hardly disobeyable commands).

Among this Black Council that mobilized its legions...there was one who was not fundamentally evil, who was here for pure ambition. One who should not be there, who did not belong here, and yet dominated the entire council with his will.

The demon lord Dao Yorinaga had laughed, without mirth and without true happiness, for he was devoid of true emotion, when he read the more and more desperate reports coming out of Barazun, the tales of growing coldness between Generals Takar and Azemilcar in Qaaolchouraav Mars, and the encirclement of this Second Western Rebellion. He moved his own puppets but held the strings to powers greater than himself, which he manipulated to his own advantage. This Black Council had been forged not of common accord but by the rather persuasive argument of the demon lord and his great violet-glowing longsword. Now the nameless denizens of the curtain of night that cloaked the Underdark mobilized as a counterweight to the Second Western Rebellion that threatened Yorinaga's domain.

Azaghal, the fool. Mere disparity in resources was nothing to Dao Yorinaga, whose wits had had millenia of millenia to sharpen themselves. Azaghal, the fool. The dwarf-lord had tried to wrest Liang from Yorinaga, when his ancestors who were just as mighty as he had managed only to defend the borders of the Halls. No, Azaghal was and would remain a fool in Yorinaga's eyes. He had struck too soon. Yorinaga had analyzed the angles, Azaghal had not. Ah, but the dwarf-lord still could save himself and Barak-dum. No, Barazun was lost to Lord Nardukher, his most prosperous achievement, thought the demon, but there are no direct hostilities. The dwarves are stubborn, perhaps, but surely they know when are beat.

Content with this line of reasoning, the current Lord of Liang left the deep, and when he appeared next, it was at the head of the vanguard appointed to crush the encircled ronin of Ashikaga Yoritomo and his brother, Toljuri.

Aerospace Combat Drone

I am designated as Overrun Class Aerospace Combat Drone FFT-3992, my squadron ID is 403rd Strike and my engineering crew call me Vincent. I am in space, drifting on a lazy unpowered orbit, a sentinel on a year long deployment to protect trading lanes.

Every day as I sit here streams of commercial convoy ships hurl past me. My orders remain to simply observe and wait while upholding the peace. I occasionally drift due to tiny differences in medium or uneven photon pressure upon my hull from the commercial vessels drive washes. I am four hours and 23 minutes from a burn cycle to re-adjust my course due to this phenomena when I receive a simple string of orders. I check their authenticity and send back a burst of telemetry to the nearest encryption capable secure data sphere link relay satellite. I am to go to Mars by fastest possible method and our squadron is to engage an enemy. The word courses through my tactical subminds like a fine wine, their endless games against each other playing out ever more fantastic possible simulations now halted and replaced by a real problem. I make a 4 minute burn to take me from the commercial shipping lane, in the far distance I can see FFT-3391 “Romeo” and FFT-3994 “Sunrise” also ridding similar ghostly flames as my own drives must be producing.

I commence preparation for shock bubble drive ignition and retract my deep space sensor pods. One by one I shut down my subminds, it is now terribly silent without their constant almost childlike chatter. I myself begin my shut down sequence once I have completed the jump calculations using the latest pulse data from the lunar beacon system , one by one powering down my crystal processing trays and turning my body over to the autonomous electromechanical sub state backup that would withstand the shock bubble drive jump. I discontinue.

I wake to find the blue erratic sphere of my shock bubble drive already dispersing. My electromechanical sub state shuts itself down after sending me a brief report about a minor fluctuation in my left shock bubble drive coil. I prepare a data dump of the fluctuation to show to my engineering crew for upload upon my next dock side maintenance cycle. Before me lies the once red planet of mars. Its dusty ocean spotted surface still retains much of the oxidised material that gave it its once red coloration. However I am not here to sight see. I orient myself to find the rest of my squadron already closing with me. Powering up my conventional drives I join them and we give of our ID code as we prepare for near polar atmospheric insertion. I retract my wings close to my body and close all of my high capacity optic pick ups. I then empty the single external tank of re-entry foamcrete strapped to my underside out of nozzles set in my skin, using my force screens to shape it delicately as I can into a cocoon of the correct shape and density to survive re-entry. A dozen thread thin sensor heads are woven through the cocoons skin with only my drive output left uncovered. I begin my decent, all of my sensors almost blinded by the wash of thermal and electromagnetic radiation as I am engulfed in plasma that was the Martian atmosphere until it came in contact with my fast descending form. I fire my drives to level my flight and then burst my force screens just once to shatter the cocoon along pre weakened shatter lines. I jettison the now empty foamcrete tank once I pass over an uninhabited area.
My wings open wide and as I open my air intakes I spark my ionic compression jets to power and begin re accelerating. The landscape below me changes as I follow waypoints shown in my orders. Around me the rest of my squadron follow my motions.

I call to my brethren via point to point laser to insure we are all in combat formation as we near our target. Below me the frozen white arctic plane seems alive with the organic mass surrounding the airbase we are to defend. I strain my intakes 5% wider to hurl my self forward ever faster in the relatively thin atmosphere, my senses reaching forward and down to touch upon the squirming mass of organic targets now below us. I fly over this mass for over 3 minutes, its size staggering to my minds. In the distance my radar and lidar pick out the forms of the airbases buildings. I loose height my altimeters reading 120 metres while my rear cameras become blinded by huge billowing clouds of snow thrown up by my passage. My forward cameras detect the tiny IR plumes of gunfire and as I close I can make out bunkers and troopers trying desperately to hold back this horrific mass of life. My tactical submind informs me that my ordinance is insufficient to destroy this swarm but may be sufficient to at least hold it off.

I slowly bank over the mass of life, now my sensors spark with exotic energy warnings. The enemy is doing something unconventional. It matters not to me, I dive upon them, my wing sirens screaming their joyous sound of coming destruction to the skies as I divert power to my weapons. Upon my wing tips my plasma guns roar out in anger for the first time in my service. Their long burning white streams of star hot cleansing flame spreads into the crowds below me, while my MACE auto cannons fire in spurts whenever a large target comes into their limited scopes, their tiny subminds urging me to divert my course to allow them to target the largest forms of the enemy. I drop two of my star slam missiles from my internal ordinance bays and after freefalling for a moment they streak away having time to flash back a single telemetry message before they impact. Their 0.4 kiloton electron compression warheads will wrench the target apart in sphere of pure electromagnetic discharge, so strong as to rend apart molecular bonds. I bank upwards and prepare to make another run even as the billowing blinding white flashes of my ordinance detonates behind me, leaving my radar temporarily useless as the wash of EMP rushes over me. My rear cameras now free of the snow that blinded them as I climb allow me to view the roiling black smoke from the carcasses of the enemy that lay in my path. In the near distance the rest of my squadron are creating similar paths of destruction punctuated by the sensor blinding blasts of electron compression warheads. My energy cells are at 84% charge, I have over 90% of my ordinance unused, I will kill many today.


Earth to Asteroid belt low energy route 4, presently commencing manoeuvres for Martian slingshot, Ore haulier Convoy CT-3394


Captain Philip Stevenson was a balding 48 year old man who had a generally unremarkable career, attached to convoy command his ageing Scythe class modular cruiser the “Just Market Action” had the uneventful duty of escorting 23 sub light freighters to the asteroid belt. Accompanied by two black star assault frigates, the “Sorenson” and the “Clasp” the plodding convoy was slowly making its way into the Martian slingshot manoeuvre when he received the message from fleet command.


Point To Point Encrypted Streaming Text Broadcast

From: COMCONFLEET

To: Captain Philip Stevenson

You are detached from convoy command as of now. You are reassigned to Fleet Command. Prepare your assets for ground combat. Commence immediate Martian orbital insertion manoeuvres and take up polar orbit. The Sorenson shall accompany you. Further orders will follow.

Attached: Authorisation File



Philip stared at the message for a moment before thumbing open the intercom.

“This is Stevenson, Nav prepare me a plot for Mars orbital insertion, engineering prep for hard burn and give me a full report on our ground combat gear ASAP. Sergeant Patterson commence ground combat preparations and prepare to give me a report. Fire control start altering missile quick fire load for orbit to ground fire support. That is all at this time.”

Stevenson took a breath then calmly prepared himself for a day he had in many ways dreaded and longed for while around him in the 600 metre long bulk of the cruiser her crew rushed to prepare for operations.


Overrun Drone details: http://www.deviantart.com/view/15355536/

Even if many of the branches of the underwater growth had burned and withered away, the ever growing roots were still healthy, just as were the main stems of the great organic mass. It wasn't like the Starspawns did not know of this form of defense the northern creatures had, no, they knew quite well that it was there. They knew that the seabed was too soft for the great mindless horde to run through fast enough. They knew it. They knew that the dwarves knew it as well. Yes, they knew.

They had not been unprepared for the mines. They surely were not unprepared for this obstacle, either. Again, what they had in store would lower the amount of their own losses. The more would survive, the more could also be thrown at the enemy.

That was why the growth had not been let to die quite yet. Instead, it had grown into much greater proportions, exerting the Starspawns closer and closer to their limit - but still, they had not quite reached it. The great roots as well as the ever growing stems and branches of this growth were to ease the march of the rampaging mass. The branches would also grow upwards to grant limited protection to the horde.

Wide it was. Wide enough for the whole spreading mass to walk upon it. This would not be a bottleneck. No. The Starspawns do not allow it. The horde would descent very close to the ocean floor whilst still in water. They would run through this organic "road" that had been placed before them.

Run to the enemy, run to them and crush them. That was what they would do. That was the purpose of their otherwise pointless lives.

The fish-men swarmed onto the land, on the foliage their masters had molded into a living road for them. They would not be bogged down, certainly, but really, who needed the advantage sand brought when you had the advantage electric barbwire did? Tangle them, fight them, destroy them. Immobilized and out of range they could do no harm.

And perhaps it would never amount to that. From the sky came admittedly small but certainly regular squadrons of bombers that dropped spare ammunition of them. Had the army not been in Qaaolchouraav Mars, it would have been a swarm, but war waits not for conditions to be fair.

The bombs created soft craters in the sand, but it put only brief holes in the swarm as a finger might make a small print in a mound of clay. Soon the clay retook its shape.

But the bombers were not necessary. From behind the positions of the waiting dwarves, long-range artillery spewed shells and shrapnel in terrible amounts at the oncoming swarm. From all directions shells burst and sprayed fragments of flak into the flesh of onrushing deep ones, and other shells exploded amongst them. The artillery pounded them mercilessly, seeking to momentarily hold them before the static defenses stalled them.

The dwarven positions that ringed the dome waited for them to tresspass on the complex maze of electric barbwire and minefields that funneled them into choke points before opening up with a disproportionate amount of machineguns, spewing columns of leaded death at the berzerk hordes and relying on the static defenses to slow them down. Khalinikhas had devised another surprise, but that would wait as the bullet after bullet poured from the machineguns as tons of ammunition was expended after the artillery and airforce (which had to literally fly downwards through the funnel of land that had been created from pushed-back water before being able to bomb and then had to fly back. An exercise that only complicated that fact that they were very few planes in Barazun anyways).

Thorin Kadarmagan held his breath.


Far away, an Ashikaga sentry screamed into his walkie-talkie as the legions of Disciples launched their first blow against the ronin pickets. Sharpshooters that they were, the disciplined formations of Yorinaga speared into them, driving through the center of this or that path through fierce resistance from men who had known only war their whole life. In many places it came to hand-to-hand combat, a favorite Liangite tactic in war, with bayonets and katanas flashing and taking blood as the Western Rebels fell back studily.

On several fronts, though, Yoritomo and Toljuri opted for an elastic defense, so as Yorinaga's Disciples progressed the resistance got progressively tougher , like pressing down a spring. The further they got, the more tension built up on the other side.

Huge battles raged across the paths up the mountains, until finally a bloody stalemate occured, not for lack of fighting but simply for lack of anyone gaining any ground, until Newton's equal and opposite reaction took place, with a nasty counterattack launched by the ronin that tore through the exhausted Disciples, led by some of the more famous clan leaders themselves.

Bullets whizzed, artillery boomed, and anti-air defenses lanced out against the Loyalist planes that whizzed above head.

Yorinaga himself was at the center of his armies, watching the ebb and flow of battle. Anti-air? They should have never had those. Much too well-armed for simple mountain bandits...Azaghal has committed himself greatly, it seems. A small smile flitted across his dark face.

Unfortunately, it quickly became obvious that the first attack by the Disciples had not been the greatest, and fresh divisions combined with the worn ones to recapture lost ground and continue their advance up the mountain.

Damn, damn, damn. He really does want to crush this in one blow. We'll give him hell every inch of the way. Yoritomo paused, considering the advancing Loyalist armies that were driving up the passes. Now was the time for a decisive move. He turned to his brother, who was milling about with a small smirk and waiting for battle. "Toljuri, the demon advances against some of Shimazu and Mori's best men. I believe you know what course now presents itself to us."

Toljuri grinned. "Their best men, eh?" He turned to the Ashikaga bodyguard around him. "Best compared to who? Yorinaga's swine? Let's give 'em a taste of Kagekatsu's revenge." He stood up, sheathing his sword and strapping on enough weapons to adequately supply a small military.

Yoritomo grinned before following the same cause, but was surprised when he spotted an incoming party of Barukzigil. They parted to reveal a dwarven commander, who wordlessly motioned to Yoritomo's golden pavilion. Dismissing his guards, Toljuri and Yoritomo entered immediately, where they learned that Azaghal had come up with a nice little stratagem.

It could have worked. It would have worked, if only the Illithid had not been aware of the situation, in control of it. If only the Illithid had not known of the weapons the northern creatures had at their disposal. If only the marching mass had been left to its own devices. If only they had been only fighting the horde itself.

But the Starspawns of R'lyeh are not an ordinary enemy. Even then they held strict control over their mindless minions. Even then they still were controlling the ever growing mass of the wood-like growth. Still they knew what they would have to do if they wished even greater numbers of Atlantians to break through the lines. They wished the dwarves to see that their technology would not surpass the Mind nor the Void. They knew that the dwarves would do everything they could to at the very least stall the massive horde. They would, instead, do everything in their power to make them advance even faster.

The growth was much like the Illithid themselves - it was as though it knew what it would have to do to survive, that it would have to adapt to continue its existence. It had spread much further from the seas controlled by R'lyeh, but only beneath the seabed. In some way, on some primal level, it knew that it should not spread visibly. And the Illithid use its ever growing roots to further their own ends.

As shells began to drop onto the great swarms of Atlantians, the effects were not quite as dire as they dwarves had hoped. Much of the deadly shrapnel, whilst it would have been effective in an open ground, harmlessly hit the growth instead, which, in turn, evolved. Changed. Adapted. Soon, even the craters caused by the constant artillery fire were closed with immense speed. While many Atlantians died, yes, many still perished from the artillery fire, not quite as many died from it as the dwarves had counted on. Nor was the horde slowed down all that much by them, in the end.

The airforce did not have much better effects on the growth, which was creating a kind of gigantic tunnel for the Atlantians to run in due to the constant firing. The very limited defense given by it was only growing stronger and more complicated. This did not mean that Atlantians did not die, no, it just meant that they killed, once more, far less than they had thought they would.

There was a downside to all this, though. The Starspawns could not quite control the growth to the extent they had wished to anymore. It did not mean they could not bring it upon the minefields nor the electric fencing, but they knew they couldn't use it much beyond the patch of land. It had grown too much. It had used too much resources, too much energy. It would have to do.

The minefields nor the fences did not really stop the horde, or cause it to divert from its course. Some of the mines were removed by the growth, some were by the present Illithid, some by lesser Atlantians simply running into them, some by other means. And what of the fences? The Atlantians did not fear pain. Whilst quite a few would die whilst running through them, many would also get through. And the growth still had enough power to force its way through such obstacles. While the parts that actually hit the fencing were charred quite severily, withered away and died, the whole was not affected by the fact.

Crush. Kill. Destroy.

Damn that hellplant. How could a single growth turn the tide of war? Well, Thorin's bag of tricks (well, actually, Azemilcar's; plans for this scenario had been drawn up upon his leave, and now they went into effect) was far from empty. Oh no. He still had cards to play.

They just didn't involve staying above ground any longer.

The dwarves abandon the trenches as planes' reconnaissance gives them just enough time to withdraw into the domes, the massive artillery guns attached to the outer shell of the aquadome continuing to mete out death. In all ten or so aquadomes and the giant one of Zaramzahar, the dwarves withdraw into the dome itself.

And keep going. The dome itself is not where the dwarves live. No, they live underneath it. Branching tunnels and halls that snake out vertically and horizontally from the dome itself and go down to the very depths of Mars, and as the last division of troops disappear into the gargantuan blast doors that bear protective runic magic against the Illithid minds (though the dome itself bears none), Thorin swears a bit and simply....waits. The planes keep strafing and a few dwarves up top keep manning the artillery, but otherwise, he has locked himself in. Cards to play, oh yes, but for now it was a short waiting game. Those blast doors were designed to withstand direct orbital strikes, they would survive the weight of a paltry few million Deep Ones. With any luck the deep one hordes would stay uninforced and waiting, and who knew? The planes kept flying.

And aboveground, the giant dome's artillery kept gunning.
--------------------------------------------------------

And on Earth, the artillery was even louder, as armies clashed. Yorinaga's advance continued, up until the moment the elite Ashikaga bodyguard hit their lines.

Toljuri yelled a battlecry, making liberal use of handgrenades as the Ashikaga troops ripped through Yorinaga's previously victorious troops. His red and blue soldiers fell back as the ronin's morale skyrocketed and they rallied behind the rapidly advancing soldiers.

Yorinaga applied more men to the solution, but nothing seemed to stand before the two brothers' spearhead. As the once-proud Disciples retreated in a morass of undisciplined retreat, Toljuri radioed to the division of men that was currently on the verge of breaking into Yorinaga's rear divisions. "Now, Yoshihisa. We've got this battle d-" He never finished as a fear overtook him. He mumbled incoherently, slammed his fist into Yoritomo and pulled him around.

The older brother looked calm, drew his katana and hopped out of the truck, armored and ready. The younger brother did the same, somewhat more jerkily.

In front of them, the black cloud coalesced into the smirking form of Dao Yorinaga, holding the great sword Gulveig which was pulsing with violet energy.

In the rear divisions of Yorinaga's army, panic broke out as the rear units, formerly lounging about, were suddenly the victim of an armored onslaught. HEAT shells lanced into their camp, mechanized infantry harried them, and Rebel tanks ripped through the ambushed rear units, who attempted to reform a line to deal with them but unfortunately managed only a jagged mess of alternately forming and fleeing men. Yoshihisa radioed Toljuri as he moved to pursue the broken Disciples, and found only static.

General Behl emerged from his office, adjoining the command center, holding a bloodied tissue to his nose. Captain Sans looked at Behl, concerned he asked 'Sir, are you alright?' Behl laughed 'Yeah, Im fine. I used to get nose bleeds all the time when I was a kid.' said the old General.

Sans looked back down at the central chart table and reviewed the last hour with Behl 'Nothing too interesting has happened. Who ever it is that is attacking us keeps drawing back when they suffer casualties. I dont think they are determined. Furthermore, we haven't seen or heard from them in the past fifteen minutes. So either they're planning a new wave of attacks, or they've given up.' General Behl threw out the tissue, his nose still red and irritated. 'Im betting they're gone for good. Our men have won the day, as expected.' Sans grimaced 'I wouldn't be too sure of that. Lets just wait on it. said the Captain. Behl shook his head 'Im quite certain they wont be back.

As Behl and Sans stood reading the information that was coming into the chart table, communications officer Ferraro had been finding a series of unregistered signals coming from TAR sector. Protocol dictated that all communications must be run through area command, why had the Ligers disregarded this? Ferraro turned in his chair and spoke loudly 'Sirs, we have unregistered transmissions coming from TAR sector.' General Behl stared blankly at Ferraro 'Can you please get that son of a bitch commander of theirs over here so I can ask him why the hell he was revealing the position of our top secret base?!' blurted Behl. Captain Sans snapped his pencil in two and threw it against the wall in frustration 'Track down the source of that transmission now!' ordered Sans, furiously.

{Sorry, not to pry here, but Zepplin, uh, as far as I know no one in Barazun has authorized you to start landing/operating aerospace forces there...)}

Fear permeated the air. The dark form of the demon lord was grinning coldly as his longsword hummed and crackled with infernal, scarlet energy. He seemed to inspect the tip of it and the dark runes inscribed on it before turning his head up towards the two brothers poised in battle stance. He clicked his tongue and smiled at them.

"Well done. Oh yes. Very well done. I expect that by now my rear units will have fallen apart. Oh dear. I should have, in fact I did know the Khazad would pull something like this. He is reaching the end of my patience with his involvement with you two. A lesser man would have already started this civil war in earnest. I have, fortunately for him, kept it down to removing a rather troublesome family line from my history." He shook his head with a look of disappointment. "The first time I destroy them is never enough. I have learned that you can never get something root and branch the first time, oh no. The second, of course, is when the remnants can be fixed. I allowed your pitiful band to survive as scavengers, and this is how I am repaid." He took a look of mock affront. "And now the dwarf is breaking the rules. He has allowed his tunnels to be used in an attempt to pincer my disciples. A similar breach of conduct by me is, thus, justifiable. I am going to kill you two, of course, to restore my original military advantage. Perhaps the retribution is stronger than the offense, but then, I only play by the rules when they suit me. Defend yourselves in the way you see fit. Run if you think you will make it very far."

The demon lord began to walk towards them briskly, his longsword Gulveig raised, the aura of energies around him retreating so that he looked like a simple man. Toljuri and Yoritomo seemed frozen.

It soon became apparent that this didn't last very long, their reflexes were as good or better than any human. As Yorinaga came into range, they sprang into the attack, katanas whirling around, looking for an opening in his infernal defenses.

They didn't find one. Dao Yorinaga seemed to be a machine, his parries and thrusts seemed to be almost lazy and yet still blocked every attack with ease and came exceedingly close every time to piercing through them, even with their two on one advantage. Skills that had been honed over millenia and millenia of time dusted themselves off as the demon lord simply toyed with these two humans. Merely humans, was all. They had no real chance, really, but they were good when compared to the usual fodder. His sword flashed again and again, the violent energies around it burning when it touched.

The Ashikaga brothers soon tired. Every parry became weaker and weaker, and Yorinaga's strokes were far stronger than they could block. His speed was something they could never hope to match, and he wasn't even exerting himself. The same Yoritomo who had taken on several trained dwarven berserkers in the Underdark and killed them with ease found himself staring down the eyes of one who had the same dark confidence he had had when fighting before. Yoritomo's arms grew weary, and virtually his entire body had been sliced somewhere.

And then it came. Suddenly Yorinaga grew tired of the game, and out of nowhere Toljuri tried to block something that felt like a freight train. He cursed loudly and fell to the ground, the blow having pierced through his stomach from front to back, and the infernal energies poisoning the huge wound. Yorinaga showed no signs of triumph or glee, and merely turned his attentions to Yoritomo with the same look of laziness.

Yoritomo gasped as his brother fell, and his rage fueled a new burst of energy that wasn't strong enough. He grew sloppy in his furor, and eventually he was bleeding from more places than he could count. He fell to the ground, exhausted, a moment later. Yorinaga raised the sword, appropriately dramatic, and let it fall.

But it never landed. Out of nowhere the shape came, dark as Yorinaga himself, blazing with the same intensity. The violet-shrouded blade clashed against a thundercloud-colored axe whose surface was constantly swirling about. Dao Yorinaga knew it, of course, as the Burkushathur, the axe of Azaghal Nardukher, who stood in front of him with a grim look on his face, his brilliant flame-red eyes blazing as brightly as Gulveig the longsword.

"Azaghal. I wondered when you were going to make your appearance. Suitably climactic, to arrive in the nick of time, that, unfortunately, was the wrong time. Master Toljuri is dead, but you have managed to save Yoritomo. And also to make me somewhat annoyed." To annoy Dao Yorinaga was something not undertaken lightly. His aura grew brighter. "You have, of course, broken the rule, as you know."

The dwarf-lord, clothed in his dark armor, gritted his teeth and spat. The Burkushathur's surface seemed to contain a flash of lightning. "Broken the rule, eh? You have sentenced a hundred million dwarves to a fate worse than death on Mars, bastard, and you will talk to me of breaking the rules. Fuck you and rules if I give these ronin an advantage they desperately need."

Yorinaga didn't blink. "R'lyeh is merely a tool, Azaghal, as you know. I am aware of your custom of taking the deaths of your kind very seriously, this does not change the fact that I have not given direct support to any sort of rebel. You did not play by the rules, dwarf-lord, so I am obliged to bend them a bit myself."

Lord Nardukher gave Dao Yorinaga the worst look of loathing. "I'll give them all the support they damn well need if it takes you down. As it looks, it hardly seems necessary now that I'm here. Care for a bout or two, your Highness?"

Yorinaga cracked something that, under magnification, might have been a smile. He raised Gulveig and beckoned to Azaghal. "Any time, dwarf." And then they both exploded into motion.

No, not disappeared. Just moved very fast. Azaghal was here and there, using his smaller size as an advantage. Yorinaga gritted his teeth for a moment but seemed to only switch to a higher-level of skill, Gulveig flashing and parrying in his hand, turning aside strikes from the Burkushathur whose surface flashed with bolts of blue lightning. Azaghal lept, spun, turned, hacked, his augments and century or two of experiance making him vastly more powerful than the Ashikaga brothers had been. Yoritomo watched for a moment, and then lay down before passing out.

Just as Yorinaga seemed to take the lead, drawing on further depths of power as each successive level proved not enough to take the dwarflord down, it became apparent that the demon did, indeed, have the advantage. As he closed in for a final, penetrating strike against the dwarf's armor, Azaghal spoke a word.

"Francelian," he gasped, continuing to keep up his parrying and riposting.

The blue warhammer came from behind Yorinaga, smashing into his skull and taking him completely by surprise, before flying into Azaghal's outstretched hand where it made a formidable pair with the Axe of Clouds. The dwarf king laughed mirthlessly. "Not the last item in my bag of tricks, Yorinaga."

The demon was momentarily stunned by a blow that would have turned a normal man's skull into something resembling jelly. He shook his head for a moment and grinned right back at Nardukher. "Your name is not Nardukher for nothing, Azaghal. I have not heard of this hammer before, and its magic is something I cannot place. Not Master Zirak's work?"

"Oh no. This hammer was a gift to me from Queen Elizabeth, actually."

Yorinaga nods his head knowingly. He knows everything about who comes into Liang. "You have, I think, managed to surprise me."

Azaghal sneered. "Another bout then, your Highness?"

Yorinaga was already turned and walking, disappearing into the mists, but glanced back and spoke. "No, Mighty Soldier, I have much to plan for. Count on that second bout later, dwarf."

As the violet aura fades to grey, Azaghal III Nardukher slung the unconscious form of Ashikaga Yoritomo over his shoulder and begun power-assisted leaps to the apex of Suntop.

He was most displeased. His followers could not break through the runes these northern creatures had set in place. But they were not exactly the most powerful of the Illithid, no. They were barely adults. Not even close to being Starspawns of R'lyeh.

It did not change the fact that His followers had failed Him underneath the surface, even if they had tried their best. It did not change anything. He would still have to show the enemy their place.

A horrible, horrible scream. One not quite audible, yet it was there.

Audible in the common sense, that is. It was mental.

So powerful that it did not remain simply within the collective. So powerful it was that all beings within a radius of thousands of kilometers would hear it within their minds, no matter how mentally receptive they were. Of course, the effect would be greatly amplified if one was actually sleeping, turning even the most beautiful dream into a nightmare. For those awake it would simply be as though a very nasty case of tinnitus.

He had risen from His Throne within the Sunken City of R'lyeh, the seals constraining His ever expanding Mind had been broken and the Gates of the Sunken City had been opened most forcibly. So powerful He was that even when the Illithid had sealed quite a bit of His oppressive presence, He still could command them.

He once more walked upon the seabed of the northern sea, just as He had done in times long forgotten. He altered His physical self as He walked towards the domes of the dwarves. He grew larger, and two of His four legs shrunk and disappeared. He was as though a gigantic bipedal monster, at least a hundred meters high. Green was His massive humanoid body, purple was His head, but where a human or most creatures would have had a mouth, He had a tentacle which would steal the very life out of creatures He consumes.

He could not see, but He could feel the dwarves. He was moving closer and closer to them with every step He took. He also felt the presence of countless Illithid behind Him, following His footsteps towards the home of the northern creatures.

Soon... Soon would they be crushed. Soon would He feast upon their minds.

Soon would they know that they have no future.

All felt it. All knew that something very, very bad was on its way to Zaramzahar. But Thorin Kadarmagan wasn't about to let it get there unmolested. Oh no. As the Void Lord grew closer, the submarines grew closer to him, with every passing breath of his gills or whatever alien apparatus he used to breath, the submarines drew closer, ever closer, looking for a chance to discharge hundreds of torpedoes into his hulking mass.

The Deep Ones on the sandy ground, on the other hand, had not very long to live at all. Hundreds of millions of them crowded onto the area of land where gravtech had pushed back the waters, but they wouldn't last long. No, not very long at all, thanks to Azemilcar and Khalinikhas.

As the trout milled about, useless, tubes some thirty feet below the surface extended upwards in all sections of the perfect circle of land around the still-intact dome, whose artillery still fired. Tubes containing something very special indeed. Something that had been reserved for any enemy foolish enough. Something Azemilcar and Khalinkhas had built into the domes from the beginning, knowing neither the Aumanii nor the R'lyehians would see it coming. He had been right. Let the Void Lord come, let him see how his armies functioned with no Deep Ones to shield him.

They reached the surface in some places earlier than others, depending on this or that impression on the sand. Slowly, slowly they peeked above the sands, the giant tubes who got only a little ways above the sand before activating. From around the edges of the domes small, five-foot concrete mithril plated walls came up roughly where the water hit the land, seemingly guarding against things that were already inside, inscribed with runes almost as powerful as those that guarded the giant blast doors inside the dome.

And then they erupted. Thousands of gallons upon thousands gallons of liquid fire spewed from them like lava from a volcano, and due to the proximity they were to each other and the fact that the sand only went down a few feet before hitting rock, this was quite sufficient to flood the entire surface of the land with unbearablly hot fire, the tubes which continued to erupt and spray even when they were buried beneath the liquid fire which washed over them and continued to rise higher, held in by the concrete. Planes ceased their bombing and began machine-gunning down any Illithid they saw first and then concentrated on the congregations of Deep Ones who would be expected to form as the tubes kept pumping ever more Dwarven Fire to the surface.

None were safe. The walls kept it in and away from the water. And as it ripped through the skin of the Deep Ones they would discover something else: It was adhesive. Even as they ran into even greater floods of the stuff, the dome itself's artillery stopped firing and was replaced by great giant tubes that spewed it forth like twisted dragons. Devouring that hellplant, devouring millions of the enemy. From above half the bombers dropped huge loads of the stuff encased in thin metal over the dry spots that exploded and flooded them when they hit as the giant, torrential flood cleansed Liangite land of these despicable creatures.

But this was not the end. If the Illithids tried to telekinetically pull water in to extinguish it, they found something very odd: Water did not work. It made the fire grow even hotter, exploding in greater heat as it came into contact with h2o and simply burning on it as it did any other thing.

And so Thorin had one last trick. He nodded with a look of pure malice as Moses' Staff was shutdown in eleven domes and then Zaramzahar.

Millions of tons of water came crashing down on the fiery pit below, and any Illithid or fish who had escaped by trying to take the highest ground possible found their skin beginning to char and fall away as the truly immense heat from the combination of the pool of flame below and the water rushing in above combined to recreate heat similar in effect to a nuclear warhead, if not quite as potent.

In short, Azemilcar and Khalinkhas had planned to take a small slice of Hell and let whoever had had the misfortune of crowding onto the area around the domes taste of it. No more Deep Ones. Just the ever-burning flames, being carried away by the restored ocean currents to whatever poor fish had tried to stop them.

And as this chain of events occured, the submarines raced in, looking for anything, anything that could have survived the Hellfire, torpedoes armed and sensors scanning furiously for anything left over. And then withdrew, off to join the wolfpacks searching for whatever God of Doom had screamed in their minds and in the dreams of dwarves who were now half-insane and raving about giant creatures moving close.

That small slice of Hell, however, was a one-time deal. All the Dwarven Fire in the world, stockpiled from ages before the first dwarf had set foot on mars, stockpiled indeed from over a century ago back when Khalinikhas was young and had first rediscovered it, was now gone. The formula, indeed, was still in Barak-dum, where great cisterns of it remained, but the giant cisterns of Barazun, huge cauldrons that the Void Lord himself could have taken a bath in, were empty. Sure, in the space of time it took the Void Lord to get there, there would be enough ready to singe his army of Starspawn a bit. Maybe take off their eyebrows, that of course didn't exist. No, Dwarven Fire had played its part. It was now gone.

And Thorin had played his last card. He smiled wearily to the exhilarated dwarves about him who had forgotten too soon the legions of Illithid more powerful than any who had been here before, headed by a God whose antecendant on Earth was powerful enough to destroy the world on his own, who even now would be upon the dwarves in a matter of days at most and hours at least. He switched on the Staff, which carried away the burning refuse into the great currents of the ocean along with turning back the water again, and calmly ordered the militia out into the sands again. One last stand. One last stand before the dark. One last stand, that's all the Uzbad asked of him. Could one resist the onset of God? No, you could fight it, but the foe that advanced towards them was beyond any technology or magic that the dwarves of Barazun had. And R'lyeh would crush them. Their shells, devoid of souls, would serve the damned Illithid long after any real dwarven will had faded to a lingering spark. All he could hope for was that there would be one less overlord his body would toil under. He grinned weakly and place a pistol in his coat, for when the time came. All the dwarves were following the same procedure. The Aumanii would not save them. They would not even fight the Illithid. Betrayed. Destiny awaited.

[[OOC Yep ..I’m a mercenary breaking the law, and being paid to do so …didn’t see that one coming. /OOC]]

The Void Lord laughed as He walked closer. Laughed within the confines of His Mind. While His followers were growing somewhat anxious, He only laughed, for He knew the dwarves had made their last mistake. For the last time would they rejoice. For the last time would they know peace. Then... Would they fall into eternal chaos.

Everything was falling into place.

He had felt the electricity run through the device as it returned to normal status. He felt it happen. He saw it with the eyes of His Mind.

He knew.

The dwarves did not see that almost no Illithid had died and quite a massive amount of the Atlantians had survived. Whilst the dwarves thought that the Illithid did not know of their trickery, they were mistaken. Sadly. They did know that the dwarves had something quite radical at their disposal, that they would use it, and that they knew that they would have to do certain... Sacrifices.

The Illithid had retreated into the Void with many an Atlantian from which they would slowly trickle back into R'lyeh. To where the Void Gate still stood. It would take anything from mere seconds to countless millennia, but still, they would return. This was something they would have to endure if they were to continue their existence, for their God had demanded it. The northern creatures were to think that they had, in fact, ceased to exist, when they had not.

The time of the chaotic mass of the Atlantians was over. Now was the time for the creatures of the Void to bring themselves into the battlefield. They advanced with the well organized Illithid "army" that walked behind their angered God. The submarines were simply a small annoyance, even lesser one than mosquitos are for humans, but He still knew that they were one of the few things the dwarves drew hope from. He left them for the Illithid to destroy as they ventured forth towards the dwarven domes.

The real battle hadn't even begun quite yet.

OOC: Currently I'm in a library in Ohio, typing out this message. I'll be here and unable to use the computer until Monday night, so don't think I'm abandoning this or any of the other threads I'm in.

-Northwestern Liang's player.

OOC: K, took me a bit longer. Damn DSL. Let's get down to annihilation. ^_^


The funeral for Ashikaga Toljuri was quick, with no tears, alot of sweat, and a vengeful yearning for blood. Yoritomo's wounds were mended, and he led the final counter-attack that left Suntop in the hands of the rebellion, an isolated mountain in a sea of Loyalists.

But not for long. The combat between the lords of Liang had gone on as Yorinaga's rearguard crumbled and his vanguard was thrown back in tatters. The ring around the Ashikaga mountain was broken, and the Disciples of Yorinaga retreated orderly towards the East and North, where large armies were already gathering for the second wave. The ronin had won the Battle of Suntop, and their prestige skyrocketed. No longer concerned with maintaining a false front, incredible amounts of treasure financed entire new legions of men that joined the rebel movement as the remaining ronin clans joined Yoritomo's growing army. It was no longer an isolated uprising. Now Yoritomo had an entire province under his control.

But down below, Nilozor's Barukzigil were getting overwhelmed. Perimeter defenses were overwhelmed as the Illithid and Beholder unleashed the grunt troops, dominated or allied xenomorphs, Utahs, drow warriors, and the lesser members of their own races as the Silver Axes were forced into a tighter perimeter around the populous centers.

But the Moon-Flame had had enough. He sounded the call for the fyrd, and several million men were only a mobilization order and a train ride away from becoming the counter-attack that drove the dark forces of the God-Brain, the Tyrant, the Chiefs, the Alphas, and the Queens back into the pits they issued from.

Dwarven fire outposts were erected around the faltering Barukzigil as they held till the fodder flooded the tunnels enough for them to counter-attack. And by dwarven fire outposts, he meant blast doors that held back reservoirs of chemicals just waiting to be ignited into liquid, adhesive fire and let flow down the corridors to meet anyone and met them out a most unpleasant death.

But now the civil war had begun in earnest. There was no more pretense of fighting with puppets, human and dwarf were now opposing combatants. And as such, deep explosives roared around dwarven networks relatively close to the surface as Yorinaga's crack troops took up positions all over the surface of Liang to block incursions into the surface.

A great battle of dwarven saboteur and human began, with the men usually losing out as blackouts affected large portions of the human world as vicious hand-to-hand combat broke out in the tunnels. For now, no major offensives were launched, both sides concentrating on the outside forces raised against them by the other.

Outnumbered by the dwarves, Yorinaga had done surprisingly well. Barazun, the giant dwarven colony on Mars, was all-but exterminated, the Second Western Rebellion was contained, and soon he could deal with Azaghal himself. There were two other theathers of operation, though, that had yet to be decided: The battlefields of Qaaolchouraav Mars and the interstellar fleet itself.


On the latter, High Admiral Antaru Rigul had gained the upper hand with well-placed attacks on the dwarven parts of his crews before the news could reach them that all-out racial war was afoot, assuring that the flagship and approximately a third of the fleet was already in human hands by the time news reached the dwarves, who made up a majority of the troops in the navy, that war was afoot.

Giant battles broke out amongst the competing crewman and marines aboard the gigantic Liangite carriers and the battlecruisers as ships randomly opened fire on others or zoomed out of formation to self-destruct into another one. Within a few days of the onboard wars, half of Liang's navy was in ruins, a fourth was under Rigul's control, an eighth was completely stationary, the two races having stalemated, bombed the exits, and settled down for a protracted battle, and the last eighth made up a contingent of dwarven raiders that had joined up with the all-dwarven warfleet from Azangathol to make life hell for the superior firepower of Rigul's human warships. The Liangite Stellar Navy was no more.

And on Qaaolchouraav Mars, the Tyranids advanced against two generals who were preparing to abandon their positions and fight each other.

----------------------------------------

It could well be said that the attitude of the dwarves in Barazun was suicidal. A few tried to take refuge in the Aumanii base, the majority grabbed whatever weapon was at hand and a hastily runed helmet and prepared to face the distant thrumming that they heard in their mind. The God of the Martian R'lyeh was coming, and he would face the last desperate remnants of the once-glorious colony. Thorin Kadarmagan donned antiquated armor, placed grenades in his belt, put on the thick helmet, placed his waraxe on his back, grabbed his assault rifle, and prepared to lead the dwarven 'army' in Barazun to its doom.

A section of the aquadome was stopped by nearly all of them. It was handing out cyanide.

The real battle had not begun.

It never would. The dwarven submerged machines had been crushed. Nothing was stopping them anymore.

They crept closer. Every second, they came closer to the dwarven colony. Every second, they came closer to the area the dwarves drained of water with their technology.

*crack!*

The water weighed heavily on the unnatural field as it grew smaller. Every passing moment as the great army of the Illithid with their God in front of them came closer to it, it withdrew.

*crack!*

The seals upon the colony grew weaker as they marched closer. The runic magic of the dwarves was failing them.

The Void Lord willed so.

*crack!*

The great blast doors began to give in. The gravitational device had been broken. Water had claimed its place above the colony. The hate of the Void Lord was upon them.

Ever closer they were.

Ever closer to fulfil the destiny of another enemy.

The army had stopped its movement. It was close. Close enough.

Almost ceremonially had they come to see the destruction of their enemies.

*CRACK!*

The blast doors began to break open. One by one. Every second, nanosecond even, a door broke down. The effect only grew more violent as it continued.

End was near. The Illithid were silent. The Void creatures were silent. But their angry God laughed. Laughed within the confines of His mind. But it was not laughter of delight, no. Cold, hateful laugh it was. A laugh of unsatiated bloodlust and chaos.

The day would come.

Water, from all sides. A frenzied battlecry as Moses' Staff was destroyed, a God stronger than Yahweh having brought it down. Millions of tons of water crashing down, down, down. Through the depths and into every nook and cranny came the vast ocean itself, as the runes lost their power under the psychic onslaught.

Tens of millions upon tens of millions of dwarves dead. Nothing more but watery mass graves in now-abandoned tunnel networks. Zaramzahar and its surrounding cities was now a dwarven Atlantis, sunk beneath the ocean.

But the dwarves were not down and out quite yet. Not completely. Fifty thousand dwarven soldiers, fifty thousand very angry and very desperate dwarven soldiers were currently outside the Aumanii base, armed to the teeth, and demanding to be let in or settled elsewhere or else some nice shiny artillery pieces were about to get dirty. And no one wanted that. Oh no. They were the last piece of the dwarven army, the soldiers who had been posted in the forts on the ice, and now they were very hungry, very distraught, and not very prone to diplomacy. All they knew was that there were men in there (and dwarven patience with the race of men was waning) who had not aided them against R'lyeh. And they had food. And ships. Unless somone aided them soon, things were about to get very, very ugly.

And yet still the dwarves had one final card to play in the war against the Voidspawn. For the submarines, made obsolete by the desolation of Zaramzahar, were now between the Void Lord and his homeland. And they had nothing left to lose. A massive, all-or-nothing assault began on the undefended citadels of R'lyeh, berzerk dwarven crews seeking to repay the loss of a hundred million dwarves and a thriving dwarven colony back with the loss of every Illithid citadel in range, as long-range torpedoes locked on to R'lyeh and every prominent citadel around it and began to unload. Destroy them. Kill them all. The loss of a home for the loss of a home. Holy site for holy site. No more legacy, no more history, just a nomadic god and his slaves. The dwarves fought on, one last time.

They knew that there might still be those annoying underwater machines out there. Whilst most of the Illithid had left with their God, enough had stayed behind. There were no vacant Citadels. There was nothing undefended about the Sunken Cities of R'lyeh.

Whilst many of the submersibles had been crushed with a simple thought as they had engaged the Void Lord and his Followers, those that had gotten through would find their weaponry impeded by the same growth their brethren had seen in their own watery grave, only grown to proportions unimaginable. Their machines would be bound by it, surrounded by it completely.

They would not be able to move. Or fill their machines with water. Or even leave their ships. Unless they had methods to kill themselves... They would have to wait for the coming darkness.

At the now submerged dwarven colony, the creatures of the Void had begun to flood into it to consume the corpses of the dead or to leech the final remaining bits of life energy some might still have. The Void Lord and the most of the Illithid stood back and waited. Some of them supervised the Void creatures.

The war beneath the sea had ended before even having an opportunity to start.

"Right. So we're fucking stuck."

"That seems to be the gist of it," said mon capitan, quite nonchalantly but with a subtle edge to his voice.

"All of us, then, are flayerfood?"

"Eloquently speaking."

"Right. Well, since your ass was the one who drove us straight into this pile of shit, I vote we axe you and try to get out of here."

"Ah, there I am one step ahead of you." And with that, he promptly fell on his axe, ending any further debate on his job performance.

The other dwarves eyed the smart-mouthed one, who looked sheepish. "Well, er, we could always try to cut our way out? Maybe? Possibly? Well don't look at me like that, its better than waiting for our brains to be devoured!!!"

The dwarven crews were fast-reaching the four-exclamation point mark, where sanity is a thing you once heard someone tell you about in a dream. Many of them decided to Rambo it, putting on oxygen tanks and attempting to hack, shoot, or explode their way to the surface. Many others fell on their axes or took cyanide. Still others fired the torpedoes anyways, hoping one would get through, often exploding their submarine. And the smallest number waited, in the gloom, for death.

The First waves of Dwarven refugees had made their way to Resolute air station and at first the Aumanii had turned them away, much to the displeasure of their guests. Though later, as more and more arrived at the base, they could no longer be ignored. Tempers flared and minor fights broke out between angry dwarven prospectors and Aumanii garrison troops. Soon the Aumanii government gave the order to General Behl to allow the Dwarves to settle outside of the base and to allow them what ever provisions the Aumanii could spare. Soon, several thousand, overly large blankets had been handed out. Though not enough to allow the refugees much comfort, it was better than nothing.

Some time later it had been announced. The Aumanii government was gearing for war against the Tyranids. Conscription was expected to be reinstated and millions of troops had been handed out mobilization orders. Soon, Barazun will be swarming with Aumanii troops.

Unearthly roars and dwarven battlecries mixed to form a sonic cacophony not yet heard on Liang or anywhere else. Barukzigil led regiments of fyrd into the fray as beholders slew dozens with their rays and illithid struggled to penetrate minds while using telekinetic might to fling boulders and hinder the advance of Barak-dum's armies. The drow warriors involved on the dark side were locked in firefights or hand-to-hand combat with the dwarven armies as the fyrd struggled to hold off the massive alpha raptors that were ripping into them.

Huge xenomorph hives erupted onto the field, channeled and directed by the psychic proddings of the mindflayers, lethal to the fyrd but harmless to the armored Silver Axes.

And Nilozor the Moon-Flame was far ahead of his armies, driving forward through Tyrants and ever-more powerful Illithid. Through the runic protections and the natural dwarven defenses of his mind the Illithid thus far had been unable to penetrate, but now what had been whispers had become screams, what had been misty shadows had become fleshed-out horrors that invaded his mind as his mental armies dwindled. Still he fought, twin flamethrowers, grenades, assault rifle and axe weaving alternating patterns of death as he drove onwards, onwards, like a train that could not stop.

And then it stopped.

He was alone. No weapons, no armor, just a hazy surrounding of multicolored fog that swirled and coalesced. Was he dead? He searched around for a cloaked figure armed with a scythe, and came up with naught. Images shimmered faintly just outside the border of reality and he tried in vain to view them clearly as the multicolored fog swirled around him.

And then he hit lucidity, and the images became more tangible but still outside the border of reality.

Reality....reality....he struggled and thought. What logic was he missing here? Entire sections of his memory seemed to blank out. Where had he been? What was he doing? And then the horrors came.

Terrible manifestations that looked like someone took all the animals and insects in the world and mixed them to varying degrees with vaguely humanoid creatures. And they rushed at him, and suddenly he had an axe, and he fought back. And he was being overwhelmed....

And suddenly Lucidity forced its way in again, and asked him "Where did that axe come from?" And he answered "From me...."

And suddenly he was rising far above the ground, was in the air, flying away, leaving the horrors behind.

But then his nightmare fought back. Black fighters came at him, struggling to shoot him down, and somehow he knew this was not a dream, and if he died, his brain would believe it wholeheartedly. What was that he learned about the fabric of reality? He dove through his own mental reality, ripped through sheets of dimensions that were molded by his own mind and formed a picture of his enemy.

And saw it, or atleast its mental image. The manifestation it had chosen for itself (or maybe it was the one he had chosen for it?) was a massive being that looked like a rubber band ball, except instead of rubber bands it was tentacles. And then he realized that here was the salient of an intruding consciousness, and reality was not his to control any longer, but to fight over.

There ensued a battle such as can only be described with intense use of physics, for each side tried to mold its reality to its advantage, and neither came up short. Nilozor was hardly aware of it, but his axe was shaped like a dwarven rune and there was another fighter with him, a massive man-like shape that looked Norse in character, armed with brilliant weaponry and seemingly invulnerable to the Enemy's strikes. To give a full account of this war over reality would be long, tedious, and unecessary. Suffice it to say that in the end, the dual attack, aided by both attackers intense skill with the axes they wielded (and a shield in the shape of a rune as well, for Nilozor) ended the Oneirological Debate, and the Enemy was minced into a tentacled spaghetti.

Reality. Full lucidity came flooding back in. This was not reality. It wasn't even his reality. It was an induced war over his mind, and he had won it. The multicolored fog was swept away, and a dimension was exited.

And the real world (or atleast the one he had came from) flooded back in, and in front of him was a massive brain. A God-Brain. The sum total of every Illithid's mental power over the last few thousand years, coalesced into one massive psychic force. It had invaded his mind and been thrown back, and the dream war was remembered by the dwarf-captain in detail as the dam was broken down that had held his old memory. "Runic weapons and a friend."
He grinned a bit, interpreting the dream inwardly. "And now, let's break this bad boy's power."

The mental screams faded as the grenade exploded, severing the Theocranium's hold over its minions. The tide had turned.

Destruction everywhere. On the surface, the swelled ranks of Ashikaga Yoritomo and the legions of Yorinaga ravaged the land in their battles, which seemed to boil down to one side taking an area and stripping it of resources, than the other retaking it and stripping it of whatever was left, and the other retaking it and putting everything to the sword. Massive population loss occured as a result, and only the armies had time to feed.

For the most part, the Ashikaga armies had gained an initial advantage that was being whittled away by Yorinaga's superior tactical leadership. Both sides experience bloody setbacks, but the Ashikaga's were always a bit bloodier. In point of fact, Dao Yorinaga was winning.

It was a hard-fought contest, but this statement held true. The mighty dwarven colony of Barazun was no more. The Second Western Rebellion was faltering. And what was left of the Stellar Navy was falling under human control. Two dwarven outposts remained, that of Azangathol on Charon...and one more. Khazad-dum. The mighty dwarf-mansions were currently under Khalinikhas' control...and also a fortress-city guarded by such a large dwarven contingent that it'd be suicide to attack it while the Western Rebellion still raged and Azaghal was triumphant below.

Another problem. Yorinaga hadn't counted on Azaghal's captain, Nilozor, being able to scythe through his carefully created dark coalition so quickly. A quick strike of Barukzigil backed with the fyrd, targetted at his Dark Coalition's leadership....and it fell apart. He had expected to quell Yoritomo entirely before the Coalition fell, and then turn his attentions towards Azaghal's underground realm, but now he was in a dangerous position. If the dwarven attacks came too soon...

And that was exactly what Gabiluzbad Azaghal Nardukher was preparing to do. With Nilozor's army having crushed Yorinaga's answer to the Western Rebellion, dwarven armies mobilized and prepared to erupt across the land to save Ashikaga's diminishing armies from certain annihilation. With Yorinaga defeated, Azaghal reasoned, Yoritomo could be subordinated and a new Dwarven Empire created. It all depended. He could not underestime the demon's personal power, though. Another well-placed appearance and Yoritomo could be dead and his rebellion with him. As the Barukzigil prepared to launch their first incursion onto the surface in centuries, Azaghal crossed his fingers. He had been losing this war for far too long. It was time to strike back.

Nilozor was clad in his silver power-armor. Well, Azaghal wasn't clad in power-armor when he faced him, was he? Surely I've got some advantage?

A few feet away was Dao Yorinaga, wreathed in violet energy.

Admittedly, Nilozor had the advantage. Behind him were several hundred Barukzigil and thousands of dead disciples, the remains of Yorinaga's rearguard. Behind his opponent was a large dust cloud obscuring the retreating remnants of a broken army.

Azaghal's armies had flooded the surface, cutting off their enemy's retreat and pincering him between Yoritomo's rebels and the vanguard of the dwarven horde, led by the Moon-Flame himself. Dao Yorinaga himself had led the van, piercing the ranks of the dwarven fyrd so that the last pieces of his army could escape.

And the armored regiments that were supposed to be holding the rear had been smashed to pieces by the Silver Axes. And now the Lord of Northwestern Liang stood alone against several hundred power armored dwarves that had trained in nothing but war for over a century atleast.

The longsword Gulveig glowed brilliant crimson. Legions of Barukzigil surrounded the demon lord. But he came here of his own will...why is he so calm?

The elder dwarf spoke, snow-white beard swaying slightly in the wind. "Lord Dao Yorinaga! Your army is in tatters. Have you come to surrender?"

His eternal smirk grew a bit wider. "I believe that was sarcasm, Master Nilozor. Talking is idle, warrior, mighty Nilozor, avenger of the dwarves. Shall I match blows with you..." A brief pause as the demon lord's black eyes flashed violet. "Or your army?"

The Moon-Flame snarled. "One on one, as per the ancient code. On your guard, demon!" And did not speak again, but flew forward, poweraxe in hand.

Legends said that a dwarf had forged Gulveig. Legends said that Yorinaga had imprisoned a piece of his soul inside the sword, and legends also said that it cut through mithril like a hot knife through butter. Some myths were true, others not.

The latter was proved untrue as the poweraxe connected and whirled down, trying to slice the demon in half with augmented, power-armored assisted blows.

Strikes that would have cleaved a building in half were deflected with seemingly minimal effort as the violet strains intertwined and increased, Yorinaga increasing his strikes, increasing the force of his parries until the brief light had become a supernova of infernal power, and Gulveig an instrument of destruction equal to anything the nanotechnology that had augmented Nilozor and the power-armor that magnified his strength could equal. He felt the axe parry again, and then felt it shatter into thousands of tiny pieces as Yorinaga pressed a little too far. He activated his twin flamethrowers, and then watched as they were coated in violet wrappings and flung back at his face. He tried to grab his rifle with augged speed, and found that it was in two pieces, and that Yorinaga had him by the neck and had lifted him into the air. It was over before it had begun.

"You have lost, oh so-called Moon Flame. Peer of Azaghal, indeed. Tell him his captain was a disapointment to his lord. Tell him that, Nilozor, or when this war is over you will no longer be on my isle." He flung the limp form of the captain of the Barukzigil into their ranks.

And had not counted on the fury of the dwarves. Millenia of discontent boiled over
, and then fifty augmented Barukzigil flung themselves into an attack, from all angles and from above as well.

Yorinaga's form was blurred, it looked simply like a large, spherical fan was whurring at top speed. He drew upon the depths of his unique powers, and his sword defied physics and was everywhere at once, a steel barrier against the axes of the Barukzigil. Bullets became stuck in the field of might around him and fell useless.

Gradually he bottomed-out, simultaneous strikes from dozens of axes stretching even the limits of the demon lord of Northwestern Liang. And then his sphere of power exploded, great infernal tendrils of force killing and burning the Barukzigil around him as Gulveig ripped through the power-armor of dozens more.

And Yorinaga had finally become angry. Explosions of violet energy erupted all around the Barukzigil, and subsided into a dense cloud around the Lord of Liang.

"Why do you defy me, sons of Aule? Would you struggle against Mahal himself? Then why do you continue to fight me? Give up! I alone could destroy you. If even now, with technology as the way it is, I defeat your best, think now how much of a chance your forefathers had! I HAVE ALLOWED YOUR EXISTANCE, and you have sought more. Demon they name me, but know full well, servants of Azaghal, that the difference between demon and god is language only. Armies take control of my nation, but I will reclaim Liang single-handedly if it must be so. Come, Nilozor. Come, Azaghal. Come, Axes of Silver. Duel with me again if you wish!"

Spheres of energy lanced out, killing more Barukzigil, and then a flash, and Lord Dao Yorinaga of Northwestern Liang was gone.

"I was tossed aside like a ragdoll, sir." A kneeling silver shape confronted Azaghal, currently out in the field in little more than an elaborate tent. The dwarflord nodded slightly. "Dao Yorinaga is not an opponent within the power of any individual dwarf to defeat, Captain. Not me, nor you, nor the Barukzigil themselves, as you saw. We have not seen the last of him. Ah, Yoritomo."

The kimono-clothed warlord had entered quietly, he thought, but compared to the movements of dwarves he was as a freight train.

"Northwestern and Central Liang are the only sections that resist the march of the Ashikaga and Khazad. Sauranero's suburbs are the scenes of heavy fighting, but Gizu resists all attempts at even approaching it."

Azaghal nodded again, knowingly. "Nilozor, take your Captain's Guard to Sauranero and take command. The central city will fall soon. Gizu Castle...it has been Yorinaga's stronghold since before the race of dwarves walked this isle. Inside its boundaries is an entirely new dimension, and his power will be amplified tenfold in the black city. I will take the remainder and move north, around to the west of Gizu itself. Yoritomo, take your armies and move northeast of Gizu and around. The three-pronged attack will leave the castle stranded. Then, and only then, will we pierce its perimeter."

Ori the dwarf yawned. He was not a very prominent general, but with the shattering of the dark coalition and the defeat in all sectors of Yorinaga's armies, he had been left in Barak-dum with the few reserve units here while Azaghal and Nilozor fought the main battles.

And he never knew what hit him. One moment he was sipping ale and celebrating, the next his arm was falling away towards the celing and away from him, and the next he was dead, his head severed.

Then a violet explosion erupted in the government buildings of Barak-dum, and the remnants of the coalition, once again forged into a weapon by Lord Yorinaga's malice, spilled into the city. The runic enchantments had been rendered useless by the unbridled power of the infuriated demon, and now the makeshift army slaughtered as it may while elements of the fyrd and a few Barukzigil struggled to rally enough dwarves to drive them out.

Barak-dum was no ordinary city, however, it was huge. And as the top-northwest levels fell under the assault, below and to the other directions the military manifested and set up defenses as the Silver Axes led the fyrd in preparing for the next attacks.

But Yorinaga was upon them, Gulveig flashing, and once again they were scattered by the onslaught of the unspeakable creatures of the darkest, dankest recesses of the Underdark, further east and deeper the dwarves moved, until finally the lines stabilized. Legions of civilian dwarves took up arms and wrought a terrible toll on the invaders, but a counter-attack stalled under the pure ferocity of the black trespassers. A great mourning rose up, and the second-in command, Nori, hurried a message to the dwarven armies operating on the surface: The Hall of Axes had been breached for the first time in two thousand years, Yorinaga had killed Ori, and now the Dark Coalition was renewed and preparing another attack.

But on the surface, the Gabiluzbad was in no position to stall his attacks as they made so much progress. Gizu was rapidly becoming an isolated stronghold amid a sea of enemies as the dwarven and ronin armies swept around its rear and closed the ring around it, Yoritomo, Nilozor, and Azaghal leading the hammerblows that chipped away at Dao's army. Sauranero's surface had fallen, but below, in the Warrens, it remained unconquered. Something slept down there the dwarves still remembered, and the loremasters continued to warn of awakening its might. Nilozor's Barukzigil continued to penetrate its defenses, but the Disciples resistance was stubborn.

And the denizens of the Underdark reinforced their lines in preparation for the final assault on the dwarven capital, as Barukzigil raced to save them. Gizu and Barak-dum, the twin capitals of the two antagonists, were now facing annihilation. The heat was on.


Zero Hour.

Placeholder post

The returning elements of Azaghal's army fared no better. Barak-dum was falling, and nothing could save it. The Halls of Axes that had resisted assault for over two millenia were being razed and sacked as Yorinaga's fury empowered the dark armies he led, and they pushed forward. No manner of axe, rifle, flame, or explosive could save the dwarves from the reckless assaults that found every weakness, every fault, every crack in the city and then accelerated its demise, ripping through every new defensive line and leaving plundering, killing, raping portions of itself behind to ravage the conquered portions and then rejoin the vanguard that drove onwards.


Until there was nothing to drive onto. A great wailing rose up above the surface, and Azaghal Nardukher, whose army was unable to save his homeland, wept, cried, and contemplated life like a dwarven Hamlet. But this time, the sling was a cannon and the arrows of outrageous fortune were Yorinaga's missiles, and the Dwarflord's mortal coil was in dire need of shuffling off. His mental faculties broken, his race overthrown. Yorinaga would win. He always won. No one stood against the Demon Lord's power. No one. Who could? The Cloud-axe? The runes? Technology? All were washed away beneath the Violet power. He was worse than Durin's Bane. Eight wars, and he had finally won. The Great Smith had abandoned his people.

Nothing was left. Nothing but the cold reality after death. Azaghal embraced it. The dwarven army fragmented. The children of stone were washed away. Perhaps some would find new kingdoms beneath the stone, but the mighty Liangite kingdom of the Gabiluzbad was done.

But up top, Ashikaga Yoritomo fought on. Not just disciples fought him now, but apparitions that were simply condensations of the dark energy that permeated Gizu, that assailed him and ate away at the spirit and morale of his warriors. The dark castle seemed further away than ever.

The dwarves had forged him power armor, had augmented his body, had given him a new blade, but on Mars and on Earth the runes of the dwarves were losing their power. Forged of pure mithril, the magic katana halved a warrior as Yoritomo attempted, hopelessly, to drive through the enemy troops. The black sky, dark with clouds, began to rain. Yoritomo's spirits dampened with the ground.

And a dark shape coalesced, and the grinning form of Yorinaga stepped out of the mists, Gulveig glowing, a corpse in his left hand. He threw it, and the shell of the dwarflord lay in front of him.

Yoritomo glanced down, looked up. His katana gleamed.

"He is dead. Your dream is dead. Your invasion is dead. Your cause is dead. I will remain lord of this isle. You, too, will now die. As cliche as they tell me this is, I existed before the cliche. Any last words?"

The iridescent armor of the leader of the Western Rebellion gleamed. "Where is the dwarven army?"

"Dead, dispersed, squabbling. Much like the different factions of the brief and not so coalesced Dark Coalition I forged for one purpose. The Underdark will not see a hegemon for thousands of years, or longer, unless I choose to conquer it."

"Khazad-dum remains unconquered!"

Yorinaga seemed indifferent. "The first and last hold-out of the dwarven race. It makes no difference. Shall we fight now?"

"Will it matter, if I fight or resist not?"

"Not really."

And then they dueled. Katanas are not made for prolonged impact fights with other blades, especially when the opposing blade is the longsword Gulveig of Yorinaga, but when it is forged by the greatest smith in Liang, probably on Earth, and possibly in the Solar System, it will do. The mithril blade clashed, parried, whirled, even stabbed, though that was not its purpose. Gulveig met it. And gradually the silver katana began to wear down, as the runes lost their power and the tiniest, tiniest beginnings of cracks started thinking about appearing. Natural warrior skill blended with power armored strength to forge a deadly combination as Yoritomo and Yorinaga fought on, blades dancing and flashing as their soldiers looked on, dumbfounded.

And then Yoritomo's strength began to give out, and he was forced down, down, and was kneeling as he felt his blade waver, and think about shattering. It would not survive another blow. Yorinaga began laughing. Laughing aloud, a booming, scorning, humiliating laugh. "What god will save you, traitor? The Sun? The Enlightened One? The Smith? None will. Let this be known, men and humans of Liang! *I* am the god of this nation. None else holds sway here. In Gizu, not even the black powers can challenge me! See now how my last opponent falls, kneeling before me. All the scorn in the universe I cannot pour out upon him, as he deserves." Yorinaga spat on the rebel, and then turned his back on the fallen man.

But it seemed, and those who lived afterwards would swear every piece of property, their left arm, and their wives that it was real, that a large, bearded man with a hammer in his hand appeared in front of Yorinaga, transparent and yet there, looking on with fury. And Yoritomo looked at his sword, and the runes glowed bright red, and he himself gained an aura, rose, and the katana pierced through the demon's back.

Yorinaga turned, his face a mask of horror and fury. "Let it be then. If I cannot hold sway here, neither shall he!" Gulveig struck. Yoritomo crumpled, dead, and as he did the demon lord, who had breathed countless, countless millenia, who had ruled the isle before dwarves, before men, before the wars of deva and asura, fell dead. The runes' power faded, all over the isle.

The black clouds faded, elements of the disciples fled. Others formed a new army that joined in the wars that followed after between the nobles, the remants of Yorinaga's armies, and the ronin lords. Neither these wars, nor those of the factions in the Underdark, nor the remaining ships in orbit, figured very much anymore in the history of the universe. The isle of Liang had fallen into a darkness that would never leave it. No god or religion would claim it, nor any single being. The way was shut, and a curvature not unlike that that separated Aman from Earth came into effect. Liang, as it effected the world, was no more.

But in Khazad-dum, it lived on. The dwarves there, numbering close to a hundred mllion, wept, wailed, but lived on. Khalinikhas, the viceroy, genius, discoverer, mourned in sackcloth, fell silent. Where are you, Mahal? Why have you abandoned us? Aglab fails! But a vision appeared to Khalinikhas Zorkher, Lord Zorkher, the last piece of the dwarven empire. And it told him to live on. That Khazad-dum's history was not yet done. But independant it could not stand. There was really only choice.

TRANSMISSION TO: The Eternal Noldorin Empire of Menelmacar, the Necrontyr Empire of the C'tan
TRANSMISSION FROM: Lord Khalinikhas Zorkher, Uzbad and subordinate of the Late Azaghal Nardukher, Gabiluzbad of Liang


Star-lord and Star-queen,
Humblest greetings. I am having trouble with words at the moment, as I am sure milady and milord's information can tell them. Azaghal is dead. Yorinaga is dead. Barazun and Liang are dead. And yet, Khazad-dum survives, as it always has, against orcs, balrogs, operatives, invasion. The battle against time has been one our mansions have always won. With the destruction of, well...the destruction of the greater part of our race, Khazad-dum cannot survive on its own. It has not the capability to survive as a nation-state, and the immense wealth that we mine, store, and work in the form of the mithril, silver, god, and iron mines makes us a prime target. The aerospace ports on the mountaintops may be your entrance point, for I am humbly asking you to accept our offer of taking the Dwarf-mansions as a protectorate, preserving our freedoms but allowing us protection, and in return our economy and the stout hearts of the dwarves who even after all this still yearn for battle will be at your service, in addition to the smiths that forged our weapons, our items of beauty, and the gifts to Lady Sirithil. Please accept it, and if so, take advantage of the offer as quickly as possible.

Deepest regards,
Khalinkhas

The first inkling of a response to the request from Lord Khalinikhas was when the Menelmacari cruiser Tirisnér captained by one Ciryatáran Mélasoron nos Fithurin, accompanied by three destroyers and a dozen frigates, broke off from a holding station in geo-stationary orbit, and began moving into a lower orbit that would take them over Kazad-dum. Shortly afterward, on Venus, a group of twenty Striker class patrol ships left orbit and began accelerating toward Earth, accompanied by half a dozen small, dagger like shuttle-craft.

Now, if one could spy on the banks of quantum entanglement communications systems used aboard the Menelmacari vessels, one would note a flurry of orders going out to another one hundred and thirty four vessels, ordering them to full combat readiness. Across Menelmacar and in several other states, elves, and the occasional human, cursed and muttered imprecations as they were paged with the message about an urgent recall. For most of them, the message happened to arrive in the middle of the night, which resulted in hundreds of stubbed toes as the various members of the ship's crews. For a group of four less 'reputable' crewmembers, this tended to result in even more cursing as they tried to find their way out of a particularly noisy nightclub - contrary to myth, elf tastes are far from universal.

The next thing an observer watching Menelmacari activities would notice was a large number of military shuttles descending from the three enhanced fleets to the surface, landing at various rendezvous points, generally between one and three for each major city. All in all, such a recall was intended to take an hour, and that was exactly how long would pass before the official announcement was made.

Meanwhile, it was not just the Menelmacari who were busy committing additional forces. From the distant Necron outpost of Taeonash, a massive battleship, Athra, Warlord in the Necrontyr tongue, accompanied by four cruisers of different types, including the Imperial Necrontyr Vessel Sataissaoth, one of the fleet's more experienced vessels. Around them, a dozen smaller 'raider' type escorts flew in a loose globe. As one, the necron vessels shot forward like arrows from the composite bows used by ancient Menelmacari, and disappeared. Their destination was Venus, where they would pick up ground forces, before joining the Menelmacari. Such ground forces were projected to be unnecessary in this case, but caution always paid.

TRANSMISSION TO: Lord Khalinikhas Zorkher, Uzbad and subordinate of the Late Azaghal Nardukher, Gabiluzbad of Liang
TRANSMISSION FROM: The Eternal Noldorin Empire of Menelmacar, the Necrontyr Empire of the C'tan

We are saddened by the necessity of this action, but we recognise our commitments as allies and the demands of morality, and we therefore accept your proposal, and have dispatched initial military forces to dissuade any acts of aggression against you. We would appreciate it if you or an emissary were to travel to Vinyatirion to explain the current situation there to us first hand. Additionally, we request that you prepare an appropriate briefing on the needs of Kazad-dum for the field commander of the Menelmacari forces, and the commanders of follow-up forces.

Sirithil nos Fëanor, Mephet'ran,
Elentári of Menelmacar, Emperor of the C'tan.

Ashen-faced dwarven representatives appear in C'tani and Menelmacari halls, explaining of the civil war, of how conflict escalated between human and dwarf, tensions since before history exploded into all-out war, the machinations of the opposing lords Azaghal and Yorinaga, and the final destruction of them, all Liangite colonies, and the isolation of Khazad-dum.

The needs of Khazad-dum are certainly not too much, chief amongst them is establishing trade links that will allow for the bringing in of food. Massive stockpiles are kept in Moria, but they will run out eventually.

Finally, perhaps most significant about the dwarves' is the breaking of their will. No fiery dwarven pride, nor laughter, and no good humor is found in the dwarven envoys. The flame has gone out of them.

On Khazad-dum itself, the aerospace ports are prepared, and the military forces of the dwarves there are arrayed in formations on the surface, all military equipment being prepared for handover if necessary. The dwarves' yearn not for any more battle.

For many of them, young and old, they just want the darkest saga of their races' history to enter its epilogue.

The elves were, for their part, generous to a fault with arranging for trade with Khazad-dûm. Though in the past there had been rivalry among elves and dwarves, especially with Thranduil, one of the more interested elves of Menelmacar (formerly King of Bajon and of Mirkwood) there was no such rivalry now. The elves were not as vindictive as they were often painted, and the chief emotion the dwarven emissaries stirred was pity.

Various forces moved in to position in, over and around Khazad-dûm, but most were only transitory. Though the elves and their allies had no intention of leaving, they were also quick to evaluate the need, or rather, lack of it, to maintain expensive outposts.

Listening posts and border forts were set up in the direction of the wastes that had until recently been Vinyaangmar, and more to the south of the mountain, where there had been occasional stirrings from the long overrun place known as Isengard. Mélasoron, with nothing better to do, took the Urulókë class cruiser down into the atmosphere nearby for the first night of the protectorate of Khazad-dûm, holding its massive form stationary over the site of the forests that were once called Lothlórien.

In the following days, the elves and the necrontyr became, for a short time, a common sight, with the latter in particular seeming to frequently forget whatever business brought them there and spending most of their time gazing at the fantastic architecture of the dwarves.

The mineral value of Khazad-dûm soon ensured swift arrangement, or rather, enhancement, of equitable trade, soon replacing ‘handouts’ for most things, though the both the Menelmacari and the C’tan were careful to expend a great deal of effort and money in arranging for support of those harmed by the crisis.